Till they learned that the men who have changed the world with the world have disagreed;
That the remnant is right, when the masses are led like sheep to the pen;
For the instinct of equity slumbers till roused by instinctive men.
It is not enough to win rights from a king and write them down in a book.
New men, new lights; and the fathers' code the sons may never brook.
What is liberty now were license then: their freedom our yoke would be;
And each new decade must have new men to determine its liberty.
Mankind is a marching army, with a broadening front the while:
Shall it crowd its bulk on the farm-paths, or clear to the outward file?
Its pioneers are the dreamers who fear neither tongue nor pen
Of the human spiders whose silk is wove from the lives of toiling men.
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