Works

Crouched in the terrible land,
The circle of pitiless ice,
With frozen bloody feet
And her pestilential summer's
Fever-throb in her brow,
Look, in her deep slow eyes
The mists of her sleep of faith...

I.


At anchor in that harbour of the island,
The Chinese gate,
We lay where, terraced under green-clad highland,
The sea-town sate.

Ships, steamers, sailors, many a flag and nation,...

Man of despair and death,
Bought and slaved in the gangs,
Starved and stripped and left
To the pitiful pitiless night,
Away with your selfish thoughts!
Touch not your ignorant life!...

Will you not buy? She asks you, my lord, you
Who know the points desirable in such.
She does not say that she is perfect. True,
She's not too pleasant to the sight or touch.
But then - neither are you!
...

"This is the steamer's pit.
The ovens like dragons of fire
Glare thro' their close-lidded eyes
With restless hungry desire.

"Down from the tropic night
Rushes the funnelled air;...

You have done well, we say it. You are dead,
And, of the man that with the right hand takes
Less than the left hand gives, let it be said
He has done something for our wretched sakes....

The stars shone faint through the smoky blue;
The church-bells were ringing;
Three girls, arms laced, were passing through,
Tramping and singing.

Their heads were bare; their short skirts swung...

O we have loved you through cold and rain
And pitiless frost,
Consuming our offering of blood and of brain
Gladly again and again and again,
Though it all seemed lost,
Ireland, Ireland!
...

Where is poor Jesus gone?
He sits with Dives now,
And not even the crumbs are flung
To Lazarus below.

Where is poor Jesus gone?
Is he with Magdalen?
He doles her one by one...

In that rich archipelago of sea
With fiery hills, thick woods wherein the mias {79a}
Browses along the trees, and god-like men
Leave monuments of speech too large for us, {79b}...

"Liberty!" Is that the cry, then?
We have heard it oft of yore.
Once it had, we think, a meaning;
Let us hear it now no more.

We have read what history tells us
Of its heroes, martyrs too....

My Lord, at last you have it! Now we know
Truth's not a phrase, justice an idle show.
Your life ran red with murder, green with lust.
Blood has washed blood clean, and, in the final dust...

"Poor lads! And you for others' wrongs and sins
Whose dead past greed and lust did never wince
To make your fathers, mothers, and now you
Miserable fiends in hell, must expiate, since
...

(The Australian Press speaks).


"Kill them! Yes, hang them all!
They are fiends, just that!
And we're all agreed fiends should be sent
To a place that's hot.
...

Australia listened! Through the brawling game
Of played-out rascals gambling for her gold,
The rotten-hearted traitors who had sold
For flimsy English gauds her righteous fame -...

I saw them as they were born,
Erect and fearless and free,
Facing the sun and the wind
Of the hills and the sea.

I saw them naked, superb,
Like the Greeks long ago,...

. . . In a dark street she met and spoke to me,
Importuning, one wet and mild March night.
We walked and talked together. O her tale
Was very common; thousands know it all!...

"He holds a pistol to my head,
Swearing that he will shoot me dead,
If he have not my purse instead,
The robber!"

"He, with the lash of wealth and power,
Flogs out my heart and flings the dower,...

I stood in Pere-la-Chaise. The putrid city,
Paris, the harlot of the nations, lay,
The bug-bright thing that knows not love nor pity,
Flashing her bare shame to the summer's day.
...

This is what I pray
In this horrible day,
In this terrible night,
God will give me light.
Such as I have had,
That I go not mad.

This is what I seek,
God will keep me meek...