They Will Say

OF my city the worst that men will ever say is this:

You took little children away from the sun and the dew,

And the glimmers that played in the grass under the great sky,

And the reckless rain; you put them between

To work, broken and smothered, for bread and wages,

To eat dust in their throats and die

For a little handful of pay on a few Saturday nights.

Composition date is unknown - the above date represents the first publication date.

The lyrical form of this poem is unrhyming.3.
glimmers: little ones.