Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/205

Steamers that ply o’er the ocean deep,
Trains which over the mountains creep,
The ships of the air that dart and leap
⁠Where the screaming eagles soar;
The plow which produces the nation’s food,
The bars that keep the bad from the good,
Skyscrapers standing where forests stood,
⁠They see through their furnace door.

They see the secretive submarines,
And the noisy, whirring big machines,
Grinding steel into numberless things
⁠The people know and need;
The scissors that fashion wee babies’ clothes,
The beds where the pallid sick repose,
The knife that the nervy surgeon holds
⁠O’er the wounds that gape and bleed.

Yet more they see through the furnace door!
They see the bursting hot shells pour
On the battle-fields as in days of yore
⁠The Deluge waters fell.
They see the bloody bayonet blade,
The unsheathed sword and the hand grenade,
The havoc, the wreck and the ruin made
⁠By the steel they roll and sell.

All this through the furnace door they see
As they work and laugh—they are full and free;
Their steel has purchased their liberty
⁠From want and the tyrant’s sway.
And just as long as their gas shall burn,
In times of need will the people turn
To them for their product and they shall learn
⁠Its value endures for aye.