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Title: Invitation
Author: Yukon Bill [
More Titles by Bill]
I bring you a prairie greeting
Crested with sunlight sheen,
A picture of mountains rising
To snow-capped heights of green;
A call from the happy home-land
Where human hearts beat warm,
Where western corn-fields beckon
And shelter from life's storm.
London, thy heart of riches
Hath the pulse-beat of unrest,
Where the many know no shelter,
Where the babe weeps at the breast
All bared to the winter shiver,
Where the hearth-fire, cold and dead,
Is darkened by the shadow
And Shapes of the underfed.
Oh, the hopeless, heavy-burdened
Bearers of woe and pain,--
Mere human stones in the highway
Of London's greed and gain.
There weeps the child whom sadness
And want have made their own;
There weeps the old, whom gladness
Is a stranger, and unknown.
Oh, come to the land of Plenty
Where the gates swing open, wide;
Where all mankind stand equal----
Where toil is a boast--a pride:
Where the silken palm clasps the horny hand
When the long day's work is done,
Where new life is born in the growing corn
In the land of the Setting Sun.
NOTE.--Written in January, 1907, after seeing 700 men and women fed by Charity on the Thames embankment as "Big Ben" struck ONE A. M.
[The end]
Yukon Bill's poem: Invitation
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