Who are the People.

؟The rogues who drink and fight and curse,
Who take a life to steal a purse,
Still driving on from bad to worse?
These cannot be the People!
Who beat their women, miscalled wives,
And, foul with crime that never thrives,
Blot love from out their children's lives
These roughs are not the people!

؟All they of deft or horny hand,
Who in the mill or workshop stand.
Or dig our mines or till our land;—
Say, are not these the People?
؟All they who strive with heart and will
Their honest duty to fulfil
And earn an honest living still:—
Sure these must be the people?

Nay;—they who toil with hands alone,
To forge our metal, hew our stone—
Merely machines of flesh and bone—
Can be but half the people!
But they—whate'er their class or state—
Whose minds control, whose minds create,
Whose hands and heads make nations great:
These thinkers are the People!

Yes:—they who work and they who plan
To elevate and better man,
Conjoined they press into a van
And say « We are the People! »
But mere brute force, mere wealth, mere birth,
Cannot regenerate the earth;
'Tis thought and action, work and worth,
Combined, that make the People!

—Mrs G. LinnÆus Banks.