THE POOR VOTER ON ELECTION DAY

I thought on this election eve a poem from cousin John Greenleaf Whittier
might remind us of why every man and woman's vote is important. Sometimes,
in all the noise and nonsense of the campaign, attack ads and robocalls, we
forget what makes this country great:

THE POOR VOTER ON ELECTION DAY.

The proudest now is but my peer,
The highest not more high;
To-day, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.
To-day, alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known;
My palace is the people's hall,
The ballot-box my throne!

Wh serves to-day upon the list
Beside the served shall stand;
Alike the brown and wrinkled fist,
The gloved and dainty hand!
The rich is level with the poor,
The weak is strong to-day;
And sleekest broadcloth counts no more
Than homespun frock of gray.

To-day let pomp and vain pretence
My stubborn right abide;
I set a plain man's common sense
Against the pedant's pride.
To-day shall simple manhood try
The strength of gold and land;
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand!

While there's a grief to seek redress,
Or balance to adjust,
Where weighs our living manhood less
Than Mammon's vilest dust, —
While there's a right to need my vote,
A wrong to sweep away,
Up! clouted knee and ragged coat!
A man's a man to-day!

1848

-Riverside Ed. The Writings of John Greenleaf Whittier ...: Anti-slavery poems:
Songs of labor and reform  Houghton&Mifflin, Boston 1891 p342