“O the clang of the wooden shoon!”⁽¹⁾
Ah! by God, but it starteth soon.
Ten in years and at five o’ day
Summer, autumn, December, May.

Tramp, tramp, tramp—how they tramp along,
Thousands marching, an army strong,
Led by Generals Dire Distress,
Cold and Hunger and Nakedness,

Led? Ah, no, they are whipped and driven —
Saddest sight to see under Heaven.
Sound more sad than the clogs at dawn
Was not heard since the world was born.

See the followers of the camp!
Foul Diseases, the killing Damp,
Prostitution, the blinding Drink,
Sores that fester and Clothes that stink.

Still they go on their dreary way,
Every morning of every day;
Uncomplaining and silent folk,
Crushed and bruised by the master’s yoke,

Faces carved with the knife of toil,
Marked with canker of ceaseless moil;
Bodies cramped in the master's vice,
Stunted limbs and such empty eyes!

Men with muscles all waste and wan;
Men without any stamp of man;
Men that look like and are machines;
Men, alas ! that have wife and weans.

Women lost to the grace of life;
Every sweetness of sister, wife,
Daughter, mother, all crushed and spent.
See how fingers and backs are bent.

Youths whose youth is a mockery;
Coarse and hard and not good to see,
Life to them is a football shove;
Lust they think is the same as love,

Girls with faces too pale to blush
Girls whose maidenhood – hush, oh hush!
Draw the shawl over head and eyes,
Happy the maiden that early dies.

Children – listen! Their little feet
Tramping down the unlovely street,
Feet that should be in fields of rest,
Like the wings in a silent nest.

If they move let it be through flowers,
To the dance of the golden hours;
Or by songs that are wild and free
To the swing of the silver sea.

Or through woods where the green of trees,
Scent of cones and the hum of bees,
Waterfalls and the song of birds,
Make a harmony past all words.

Nay, not so. In this sombre town
Children’s feet are a-marching down
Towards the mill and the weaving shed;
Master's children are still abed.

Man and youth, the wife and the maid,
Boy and girl, with their faces staid,
Old with anguish and not with age,
With no thought of revenge or rage —

Go their way to the waiting mill,
Without feeling, or hope, or will;
With no care about drawing breath,
Like a man that is doomed to death.

As one listened one would have said
That the manifold clattering tread
Of the myriad wooden feet
Blent into a colossal beat;

Like a rumour beyond our ken,
Like the marching of armed men,
Like the boom of a coming storm,
Multitudinous, uniform.

And the footsteps so much confused
Of the people so sore abused
Had a rhythm and unison
That had menace within their tone;

Telling ears that can really hear
That the hour of the fight is near;
That the army is falling in,
That above all the battle din

Sound the loudest, as is most meet,
Is the sound of the workers’ feet
Keeping step as they march along
Till their march is a psalm and song.

Tramp, tramp, tramp as they tramp along,
Millions marching, and army strong,
Side by side and with knee to knee,
Battlecries “That we will be free!”

“Workers all! To the fight, the fight,”
“Length and breadth of the world unite!”
“What to lose but a galling chain?”
“What to win? Why a world to gain!”