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b'CR Robinson read by Classic Poetry Aloud: Giving voice to the poetry of the past.\\nwww.classicpoetryaloud.com\\n\\n--------------------------------------------\\n\\nThe Call Of Brotherhood\\nby Corinne Roosevelt Robinson (1861 - 1933)\\n\\nHave you heard it, the dominant call\\nOf the city\\u2019s great cry, and the thrall\\nAnd the throb and the pulse of its Life,\\nAnd the touch and the stir of its Strife,\\nAs, amid the dread dust and the din\\nIt wages its battle of Sin?\\nHave you felt in the crowds of the street\\nThe echo of mutinous feet\\nAs they march to their final release,\\nAs they struggle and strive without peace?\\nMarching how, marching where, and to what!\\nOh! by all that there is, or is not,\\nWe must march too and shoulder to shoulder.\\nIf a frail sister slip, we must hold her,\\nIf a brother be lost in the strain\\nOf the infinite pitfalls of pain,\\nWe must love him and lift him again.\\nFor we are the Guarded, the Shielded,\\nAnd yet we have wavered and yielded\\nTo the sins that we could not resist.\\n\\n\\nBy the right of the joys we have missed,\\nBy the right of the deeds left undone,\\nBy the right of our victories won,\\nPerchance we their burdens may bear\\nAs brothers, with right to our share.\\nThe baby who pulls at the breast\\nWith its pitiful purpose to wrest\\nThe milk that has dried in the vein,\\nThat is sapped by life\\u2019s fever and drain\\nThe turbulent prisoners of toil,\\nWhose faces are black with the soil\\nAnd scarred with the sins of the soul,\\nWho are paying the terrible toll\\nOf the way they have chosen to tread,\\nAs they march on in truculent dread,\\nAnd the Old, and the Weary, who fall\\nOh! let us be one with them all!\\nBy the infinite fear of our fears,\\nBy the passionate pain of our tears,\\nLet us hold out our impotent hands,\\nMade strong by Jehovah s commands,\\nThe God of the militant poor,\\nWho are stronger than we to endure,\\nLet us march in the front of the van\\nOf the Brotherhood valiant of Man!\\n\\n\\nFirst aired: 20 January 2009\\n\\nFor hundreds more poetry readings, visit the Classic Poetry Aloud index.\\n\\nReading \\xa9 Classic Poetry Aloud 2009'