1 When will you save the people?
O God of mercy, when?
Not states and corporations!
But children, women, men!
Flowers of your heart, O God, are they;
Let them not pass, like weeds, away,
Their heritge a sunless day;
God, save the people!
2 Shall crime breed crime forever,
Strength aiding still the strong?
Is it your will, Creator,
That we shall toil for wrong?
"No," say your mountains; "no," your skies;
The clouded sun shall brighty rise,
And song be heard instead of sighs;
God, save the people!
3 When will you save the people?
O God of merccy, when?
The people, Lord, the people,
But children, women, men!
God, save the people; yours we are,
Your children, as your angels fair,
From vice, oppression, and despair;
God, save the people!
Source: Worship in Song: A Friends Hymnal #292
Elliott, Ebenezer, commonly known as the "Corn Law Rhymer," was born near Rotherham, Yorkshire, 1781, and died at Barnsley, in the same county, in 1849. The greater part of his life was spent in Sheffield, where he was engaged in the iron trade, and it was in a Sheffield newspaper that many of his poetical pieces first appeared.
He published:—
(1) Night, a Descriptive Poem, 1818. (2) The Village Patriarch, 1829. (3) Corn Law Rhymes, 1831. (4) Poems, 1834 ; and (5) More Prose and Verse, 1850.
A piece or two from these works have been adapted as hymns in some Unitarian Collections. They include "Another year is swallowed by the sea," for the old and new year.
-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
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