Still from the film The Hungry Mile

The Hungry Mile

By Ernest Antony

A poem by Ernest Antony

They tramp there in their legions on the morning dark and cold

To beg the right to slave for bread from Sydney's lords of gold;

They toil and sweat in slavery, 'twould make the devil smile

To see the Sydney wharfies tramping down the hungry mile

On ships from all the seas they toil, that others of their kind

May never know the pinch of want or feel the misery blind

That make the lives of men a hell in those conditions vile

That are the hopeless lot of those who tramp the hungry mile.

The slaves of men who know no thought of anything but gain

Who wring their brutal profits from the blood and sweat and pain

Of all the disinherited who slave and starve the while

Upon the ships beside the wharves along the hungry mile

But every stroke of that grim lash that sears the souls of men

With interest due from years gone by shall be paid back again

To those who drive these wretched slaves to build the golden pile

And blood shall blot the memory out - of Sydney's hungry mile

The day will come, aye, come it must, when these same slaves shall rise

And through the revolution's smoke ascending to the skies,

The master's face shall show the fear he hides behind the smile

Of these his slaves who on that day shall storm the hungry mile.

And when the world grows wiser and all men at last are free

When none shall feel the hunger nor tramp in misery

To beg the right to slave for bread, the children then may smile

At those strange tales they tell of what was once the hungry mile.

For further information

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