Works

Little elfin maid,
Old, though scarce two years,
With your big dark hazel eyes
Tenderer than tears,

And your rosebud mouth
Lisping jocund things,
Breaking brooding silence with...

Where'er I go in this dense East,
In sunshine or shade,
I retch at the villainous feast
That England has made.

And my shame cannot understand,
As scorn springs elate,...

This is a leader's tent. "Who gathers here?"
Enter and see and listen. On the ground
Men sit or stand, enter or disappear,
Dark faces and deep voices all around.
...

Beyond the night, down o'er the labouring East,
I see light's harbinger of dawn released:
Upon the false gleam of the ante-dawn,
Lo, the fair heaven of day-pursuing morn!
...

"We sow the fertile seed and then we reap it;
We thresh the golden grain; we knead the bread.
Others that eat are glad. In store they keep it,
While we hunger outside with hearts like lead.
Hallelujah!
...

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!
...

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 went the other day
To see the birds and beasts they keep enmewed
In the London Zoo. One of the first I saw -
One of the first I noticed, was an eagle.
Ragged, befouled, within his iron bars...

Was it for nothing in the years gone by,
O my love, O my friend,
You thrilled me with your noble words of faith? -
Hope beyond life, and love, love beyond death!
Yet now I shudder, and yet you did not die,...

"My sweet, my child, through all this night
Of dark and wind and rain,
Where thunder crashes, and the light
Sears the bewildered brain,

"It is your face, your lips, your eyes
I see rise up; I hear...

We thank you for a noble work well done.
There is a kindness - ('tis the truer one;
The better part the simpler heart doth know),
The care to give the day a brighter sun
...

I.


There was a time when all thy sons were proud
To speak thy name,
England, when Europe echoed back aloud
Thy fearless fame:

When Spain reeled shattered helpless from thy guns...

Madam, you have done well! Let others with praise unholy,
Speech addressed to a woman who never breathed upon earth,
Daub you over with lies or deafen your ears with folly,...

You are at least a man, of men a king.
You have a heart, and with that heart you love.
The race you come from is not gendered of
The filthy sty whose latest litter cling...