We Have Fed You All A Thousand Years

We have fed you all for a thousand years
And you hail us still unfed
Though there’s never a dollar of all your wealth
But marks the workers' dead.
We have yielded our best to give you rest
And you lie on crimson wool.
Then if blood be the price of all your wealth,
Good God, we have paid in full!
There is never a mine blown skyward now
But we’re buried alive for you.
And there’s never a wreck drifts shoreward now
But we are its ghastly crew.
Go and reckon our dead by the forges red
And the factories where we spin.
If blood be the price of your cursed
wealth
Good God, we have paid it in!
We have fed you all for a thousand years
For that was our doom, you know
From the days when you chained us in your fields
To the strike of a week ago.
You have taken our lives, and our husbands and wives
And called it your your legal share
Then if blood be the price of your lawful wealth
Good God, we have bought it fair!