CHANTS for SOCIALISTS

BY
WILLIAM MORRIS.

CONTENTS:

LONDON:
Socialist League Office,
13 FARRINGDON ROAD, HOLBORN VIADUCT, E.C.
1885.

PRICE ONE PENNY.

I have looked at this claim by the light of history and my own conscience, and it seems to me so looked at to be a most just claim, and that resistance to it means nothing short of a denial of the hope of civilisation.

This then is the claim:—

It is right and necessary that all men should have work to do which shall be worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to do; and which should be done under such conditions as would make it neither over-wearisome nor over-anxious.

Turn that claim about as I may, think of it as long as I can, I cannot find that it is an exorbitant claim; yet again I say if Society would or could admit it, the face of the world would be changed; discontent and strife and dishonesty would be ended.  To feel that we were doing work useful to others and pleasant to ourselves, and that such work and its due reward could not fail us!  What serious harm could happen to us then?  And the price to be paid for so making the world happy is Revolution.

THE DAY IS COMING.

Come hither lads, and hearken, for a tale there is to tell,
Of the wonderful days a-coming when all shall be better than well.

And the tale shall be told of a country, a land in the midst of the sea,
And folk shall call it England in the days that are going to be.

There more than one in a thousand in the days that are yet to come,
Shall have some hope of the morrow, some joy of the ancient home.

For then—laugh not, but listen, to this strange tale of mine—
All folk that are in England shall be better lodged than swine.

Then a man shall work and bethink him, and rejoice in the deeds of his hand,
Nor yet come home in the even too faint and weary to stand.

Men in that time a-coming shall work and have no fear
For to-morrow’s lack of earning and the hunger-wolf anear.

I tell you this for a wonder, that no man then shall be glad
Of his fellow’s fall and mishap to snatch at the work he had.

For that which the worker winneth shall then be his indeed,
Nor shall half be reaped for nothing by him that sowed no seed.

O strange new wonderful justice!  But for whom shall we gather the gain?
For ourselves and for each of our fellows, and no hand shall labour in vain.

Then all mine and all thine shall be ours, and no more shall any man crave
For riches that serve for nothing but to fetter a friend for a slave.

And what wealth then shall be left us when none shall gather gold
To buy his friend in the market, and pinch and pine the sold?

Nay, what save the lovely city, and the little house on the hill,
And the wastes and the woodland beauty, and the happy fields we till.

And the homes of ancient stories,