Poem by Janet Hamilton

A Lay of the Tambour Frame

Bending with straining eyes
 Over the tambour frame,
Never a change in her weary routine—
 Slave in all but the name.
Tambour, ever tambour,
 Tambour the wreathing lines
Of 'broidered silk, till beauty's robe
 In rainbow lustre shines.

There, with colourless cheek;
 There, with her tangling hair;
Still bending low o'er the rickety frame,
 Seek, ye will find her there.
Tambour, ever tambour,
 With fingers cramped and chill;—
The panes are shattered, and cold the wind
 Blows over the eastern hill.

Why quail, my sisters, why,
 As ye were abjects vile,
When begging some haughty brother of earth
 "To give you leave to toil?"
It is tambour you must,
 Naught else you have to do;
Though paupers' dole be of higher amount
 Than pay oft earned by you.

No union strikes for you;—
 Unshielded and alone,
In the battle of life—a battle it is,
 Where virtue is oft o'erthrown.
O working men! O why
 Pass ye thus careless by,
Nor give to the working woman's complaint
 One word of kind reply?

Selfish, unfeeling men!
 Have ye not had your will?
High pay, short hours; yet your cry, like the leech,
 Is, Give us, give us still.
She who tambours—tambours
 For fifteen hours a day—
Would have shoes on her feet, and dress for church,
 Had she a third of your pay.

Sisters, cousins, and aunts
 Are they; yet, if not so,
Say, are they not sisters by human ties,
 And sympathy's kindly flow?
To them how dear the boon
 From brother's hand that came!
It would warm the heart and brighten the eyes,
 While bending o'er the frame.

Raise ye a fund to aid
 In times of deep distress;
While man helps man, to their sisters in need
 Brothers can do no less.
Still the tambourer bends
 Wearily o'er the frame.
Patterns oft vary, for fashions will change—
 She is ever the same.

1. A Phase of the War in America, 1864
2. A Ballad of Memorie
3. Duleep Singh
4. To William Logan
5. Address to Garibaldi in His Retirement at Caprera, 1868

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