CORRESPONDENCE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 23 December 1913, Page 7

CORRESPONDENCE.

THE CRY OF TOIL. (To the Editor.) Sir, —Enclosed please find a few lines of poetry by Rudyard Kipling. I would ask you, as a favour, to publish it, and-let your readers 'compare it with, the linos you published this morning by G. Leland.—l am, etc., ROD McRAE. Masterton, December 22, 1913. THE CRY OF TOIL. Wo have fed you all for a'thousand years, And you hail us still unfed, Though there's never a dollar of allyour wealth But marks the workers' dead. We have yielded our best to give you rest, And you lie on crimson wool; For, if blood be the price of all your wealth, Good God! we ha' paid in full. There's' never a mine blown skyward now But we're buried alive for you ; There's never a wreck drifts shoreward now But we are, its ghastly crew. Go reckon our dead by the forges red, And the factories,where we spin; If blood be the price of your cursed wealth, Good God! we ha' paid in full. We have fed you all for a thousand years, For that was our doom, you know; From the day when you chained us in your fields, ■ .To the .strike: of a -week ago., • You. ha' eaten our lives and ourbab- * ies and wives, And we're told it'« your legal share; But if blood be the price of your lawful wealthi Good Odd! we ha' bought it fair. , —xvudyard Kipling.