Explore "A Vision" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
My soul beheld a vision of the Master: / Methought He stood with grieved and questioning eyes, / Where Freedom drove its chariot to disaster / And toilers heard, unheeding, toilers' cries. / Where man withheld God's bounties from his neighbour, / And fertile fields were sterilised by greed; / Where Labour's hand was lifted against labour, / And suffering serfs to despots turned when freed.
Majestic rose tall steeple after steeple; / Imperious bells called worshippers to prayer; / But as they passed, the faces of the people / Were marred by envy, anger and despair. / ‘Christ the Redeemer of the world has risen, / Peace and good will,' so rang the major strain; / But forth from sweat-shops, tenement and prison / Wailed minor protests, redolent with pain.