Anti-Slavery Poems and Songs of Labor and Reform, Complete

THE POOR VOTER ON ELECTION DAY.

     THE proudest now is but my peer,
     The highest not more high;
     To-day, of all the weary year,
     A king of men am I.
     To-day, alike are great and small,
     The nameless and the known;
     My palace is the people's hall,
     The ballot-box my throne!

     Who serves to-day upon the list
     Beside the served shall stand;
     Alike the brown and wrinkled fist,
     The gloved and dainty hand!
     The rich is level with the poor,
     The weak is strong to-day;
     And sleekest broadcloth counts no more
     Than homespun frock of gray.

     To-day let pomp and vain pretence
     My stubborn right abide;
     I set a plain man's common sense
     Against the pedant's pride.
     To-day shall simple manhood try
     The strength of gold and land;
     The wide world has not wealth to buy
     The power in my right hand!

     While there's a grief to seek redress,
     Or balance to adjust,
     Where weighs our living manhood less
     Than Mammon's vilest dust,—
     While there's a right to need my vote,
     A wrong to sweep away,
     Up! clouted knee and ragged coat
     A man's a man to-day.

     1848.