With calloused hands and weary bone,
The labourer toiled, unseen, unknown.
Beneath the sun, through rain and sleet,
Each day began on aching feet.

The pick, the shovel, forge, and spade,
Were tools by which their lives were made.
Brick by brick, or fields they’d reap,
For pennies earned, their dreams ran deep.

The mines, dark mouths, where shadows stayed,
Drew men below, where light decayed.
Their lungs grew thick with blackened air,
Yet families fed, for toil was fair.

The mill’s great wheel, it spun and sang,
While looms they clacked, the echoes rang.
Young fingers bled, the threads they tied,
Their childhoods swept and cast aside.

The rails they laid, the bridges high,
With rope and beam against the sky.
From steel and sweat, great towers rose,
Though hands that shaped them no one knows.

The women, too, with children near,
Worked factories or scrubbed through tears.
Their backs were bent, their futures small,
Yet strength they found, though paid but thrall.

In rooms of ten, the workers slept,
Their hunger’s groan, a secret kept.
For wealth amassed by others’ hands,
Left labour’s folk in barren lands.

Yet still they rose with morning’s light,
The hope for bread, their quiet fight.
Their toil unsung, their faces plain,
But hearts of iron bore the strain.

So honour those who forged the way,
With blood and sweat to shape our day.
Their sacrifice, though long forgot,
Lays in the world their labour wrought.