The song of the hammer and drill!

Facing dangers more grim than the cannon's mouth;

Breathing poisons more foul than the swamps of the south

In their tropical fens distill.

Clink! Clink! Clink!

Thus the battle he fights for his daily bread;

Thus our gold and our silver, our iron and lead,

Cost us lives, as true as our blood is red,

And probably always will.

 Life's Undercurrent.

Within the precincts of a hospital,

I wandered in a sympathetic mood;

Where face to face with wormwood and with gall,

With wrecks of pain and stern vicissitude,

The eye unused to human misery

Might view life's undercurrent vividly.

My gaze soon rested on the stricken form

Of one succumbing to the fever's drouth,

With throbbing brow intolerably warm,

With wasted lips and mute appealing mouth;

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