Cry of Ethiopia

Sons of a forgotten race
Laying your burden down
Where streams of saline tears flow
To the searing sands of a desert place.

Oh veil of poverty, why?
Why hang your tattered cloth
About our weak and weary frames
Piled high on a heap of arid sand to die.

Cries of our women and children,
Weeping and wailing notes of discord
Are the sounds of pain and hunger,
As death plucks every string on his violin.

And fate, the thief has filled his sack
With the gems of our children's smiles
Our laughter, he has bargained off
For the rags left on our backs.

Sons of an impoverished race
Crying out to a world of plenty
Branded beggars by fate, we ask
But for a morsel of human grace.