Works

These Chinese toil and yet they do not starve,
And they obey, and yet they are not slaves.
It is the "free-born" fuddled Englishmen
That grovel rotting in their living graves.
...

(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!
...

(Foo-chow.)


"Yes, I used always to think
That you Russians knew
How to make the good drink
As none others do.

"And I thought moreover,
(Not with the epicures),...

[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...

"The foxes have holes,
And the birds of the air have nests,
But where shall the heads of the sons of men
Be laid, be laid?"

"Where the cold corpse rests,
Where the sightless moles...

"Ah, with torn heart I see them still,
Wee unused clothes and empty cot.
Though glad my love has missed the ill
That falls to woman's lot.

"No tangled paths for her to tread...

"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;...

. . . 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!...

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,...

"Be with us by day, by night,
O lover, O friend;
Hold before us thy light
Unto the end!

"See, all these children of ours
Starved and ill-clad.
Speak to thy heart's lily-flowers,...

Yonder the band is playing
And the fine young people walk.
They are envying each other and talking
Their pretty empty talk.

There, in the shade on the outskirts,
Stretched on the grass, I see...

Here to the parks they come,
The scourings of the town,
Like weary wounded animals
Seeking where to lie them down.

Brothers, let us take together
An easeful period....

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,...

"Take with all my heart, friend, this,
The labour of my past,
Though the heart here hidden is
And the soul's eternities
Hold the present fast.

"Take it, still, with soul and heart,...

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,...

Girls, we love you, and love
Asks you to give again
That which draws it above,
Beautiful, without stain.

Give us weariless faith
In our Cause pure, passionate,
Dearer than life and death,...

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,...