Works

Had you lived when a tyrant king
Strove to make all the slaves of one,
With nobles and with churchmen you
Had stood unflinching, pure and true,
To annihilate that hateful thing...

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,...

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!
...

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....

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...

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.
...

In the black night, along the mud-deep roads,
Amid the threatening boughs and ghastly streams,
Hark! sounds that gird the darknesses like goads,
Murmurs and rumours and reverberant dreams,...

Comrade, yet a little further I would go before the night
Closes round and chills in darkness all the glorious sunset light -
Yet a little, by the cliff there, till the stately home I see...

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
...

"Teach me, love, to be true;
Teach me, love, to love;
Teach me to be pure like you.
It will be more than enough!

"Ah, and in days to come,
Give me, my seraph, too,
A son nobler than I,...

Grave this deep in your hearts,
Forget not the tale of the past!
Never, never believe
That any will help you, or can,
Saving only yourselves!
What have the gentlemen done,
Peerless haters of wrong,...