Works

(Foo-chow.)


From the bright and blinding sunshine,
From the whirling locust's song,
Into the dark and narrow fissures
Of the streets I am borne along.

Here and there dusky-beaming...

(Min River, Fo Kien.)


Up in the misty morning,
Up past the gardened hills,
With the rhythmic stroke of the rowers,
While the blue deep pales and thrills!
...

Aloll in the warm clear water,
On her back with languorous limbs,
She lies. The baby upon her breasts
Paddles and falls and swims.

With half-closed eyes she smiles,
Guarding it with her hands;...

[The spectacle of the life of the London Dock labourers is one of the most terrible examples of the logical outcome of the present social system. In the six great metropolitan docks over 100,000 men are employed, the great bulk...

"What, are you lost, my pretty little lady?
This is no place for such sweet things as you.
Our bodies, rank with sweat, will make you sicken,
And, you'll observe, our lives are rank lives too."
...

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.
...

"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!
...

"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!
...

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 -...

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,...

Not for the thought that burns on keen and clear,
Heat that the heat has turned from red to white,
The passion of the lone remembering night
One with the patience day must see and hear -...

O India, India, O my lovely land -
At whose sweet throat the greedy English snake,
With fangs and lips that suck and never slake,
Clings, while around thee, band by stifling band,...

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,...