Little Brothers of the Ground

LITTLE ants in leafy wood,

Bound by gentle Brotherhood,

While ye gaily spoil,

Men are ground by the wheel of toil

While ye follow Blessed Fates,

Men are shriveled up with hates;

Or they lie with sheeted Lust,

And they eat the bitter dust.

Ye are fraters in your hall,

Gay and chainless, great and small;

All are toilers in the field,

All are sharers in the yield.

But we mortals plot and plan

How to grind the fellow-man;

Glad to find him in a pit,

If we get some gain of it.

So with us, the sons of Time,

Labor is a kind of crime,

For the toilers have the least,

While the idlers lord the feast.

Yes, our workers they are bound,

Pallid captives to the ground;

Jeered by traitors, fooled by knaves,

Till they stumble into graves.

How appears to tiny eyes

All this wisdom of the wise?

Edwin Markham

Index to poems in the collection by Edwin Markham