Not that I always struck the proper mean
Of what mankind must give for what they gain,
But, when I think of those whom dull routine
And the pursuit of cheerless toil enchain,
Who from their desk-chairs seeing a summer cloud
Race through blue heaven on its joyful course
Sigh sometimes for a life less cramped and bowed,
I think I might have done a great deal worse;
For I have ever gone untied and free,
The stars and my high thoughts for company;
Wet with the salt-spray and the mountain showers,
I have had the sense of space and amplitude,
And love in many places, silver-shoed,
Has come and scattered all my path with flowers.

(“Three bills known as the Thompson-Bewley cannery bills have been advanced to third reading in the Senate and Assembly at Albany. One permits the canners to work their employés seven days a week, a second allows them to work women after 9 p.m. and a third removes every restriction upon the hours of labor of women and minors.”—Zenas L. Potter, former chief cannery investigator for New York State Factory Investigating Commission.)

Let us not to an unrestricted day

Impediments admit. Work is not work

To our employés, but a merry play;

They do not ask the law’s excuse to shirk.

Ah, no, the canning season is at hand,

When summer scents are on the air distilled,

When golden fruits are ripening in the land,

And silvery tins are gaping to be filled.

Now to the cannery with jocund mien

Before the dawn come women, girls and boys,

Whose weekly hours (a hundred and nineteen)

Seem all too short for their industrious joys.

If this be error and be proved, alas

The Thompson-Bewley bills may fail to pass!

God is and is seen wherever we look, 

From the roaring sea to the noiseless brook;

From the everlasting snow-clad hill,

To the smallest sand beneath the rill.

The granite rock and the liquid flood,

Each portray the living hand of God!

From the blazing sun that rules the day,

To the faint light of the glow worm’s ray;

From the blue vaults of the azure sky,

From all the nocturnal worlds on high;

To the smallest insects on the ground,

Wherever that insect may be found,

The daguerreotype of God is there,

Insects, stars and sky and sun declare.