Songs of the Army of the Night

Francis William Lauderdale Adams

Songs of the Army of the Night

TO EDITH

“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 hearYour voice that sobs and calls and cries,   Or shrills and mocks at fear.“O this that’s mine is yours as well,   For side by side our feetTrod through these bitter brakes of hell.   Take it, my child, my sweet!”

PREFACE

A few words of preface seem necessary in sending out this little book. It is to be looked on as the product of the life of a social worker in England, in his travels, and in Australia. The key-note of the First Part – “England” – is desperation, or, if any hope, then “desperate hope.” A friend once reported to me a saying of Matthew Arnold’s, that he did not believe in any man of intelligence taking a desperate view of the social problem in England. I am afraid that saying relegates me to the ranks of the fools, but I am content to remain there. I believe that never since 1381, which is the date of the Peasants’ Revolt, has England presented such a spectacle of the happiness of the tens, of the misery of the millions. It is not by any means the artisan, or the general or the agricultural labourer, who is the only sufferer. All society groans under the slavery of stupendous toil and a pittance wage. The negro slavery of the Southern States of America was better than the white slavery of to-day all over the earth, but more particularly in Europe and in America. Capitalism is built on the dreadful wrong of recompensing Labour, not according to the worth of its work, but according to the worth of its members in the market of unlimited competition, and that soon comes to mean the payment of what will hold body and soul together when in the enjoyment of health and strength. Landlordism is built on the dreadful wrong of sharing with Capitalism the plunder of Labour. Why are rents high in Australia? Because here Labour is scarcer, its wages correspondingly higher, and therefore Landlordism steps in to filch from Labour its hard-won comforts, and once more reduce it to the necessities of existence. The American slavers had to spend more in housing and keeping any fixed number of their slaves in serviceable condition than Capitalism spends in wages. Capitalism and Landlordism, like good Christian Institutions, leave the living to keep alive their living, and the dead to bury their dead. This cannot continue for ever. At least all the intelligent portion of the community will grow to see the injustice and attempt to abolish it. But when will the great mass of unintelligent people who have won a large enough share of the plunder of their fellows to minister to their own comforts – when will these, also, awake and see? England will realize the desperation of her social problem when its desperation is shown her by fire and blood – then, and not till then! What shall teach her her sins to herself is what is even now teaching her her sins to Ireland.

I make no apology for several poems in the First Part which are fierce, which are even blood-thirsty. As I felt I wrote, and I will not lessen the truth of what inspired those feelings by eliminating or suppressing the record of them. Rather, let me ask you, whoever you be, to imagine what the cause was, from the effect in one who was (unhappily) born and bred into the dominant class, and whose chief care and joy in life was in the pursuit of a culture which draws back instinctively from the violent and the terrible. I will go further. I will arraign my country and my day, because their iniquity would not let me follow out the laws of my nature, which were for luminosity and quiet, for the wide and genial view, but made me “take arms against a sea of troubles,” hoping only too often “by opposing to end them.” No, we make no apology for bloody sweat and for tears of fire wrung out of us in the Gethsemane and on the Calvary of our country: we make no apology to those whom we have the right to curse.

In the Second Part – “Here and There,” the record of a short trip in the East – the sight of the sin which England has committed not only against herself, against Ireland, against Scotland, but against India, against China, against the sweetest and gentlest people in the earth, the Japanese – the sight of this, and of the signs of England’s doom, the punishment for the abuse of the greatest trust any modern nation has had given to her, inspires a hatred which only that punishment can appease. In the Third Part – “Australia” – there is neither ferocity nor blood-thirstiness. Its key-note is hope, hope that dreads but does not despair.

I may add that in this edition I have sacrificed all merely personal aspects of the poems to attempt to give the book a more complete totality. We know well enough that allowance will rarely be made for any of these things: that our plea for comprehension will too often be an idle one. None the less we make it, for the sake of those who are willing to attempt to realize the social problem and to seek within themselves what they can do for its solution. We have no care whatever as to what view they take of it. Let them be with us or against us, it matters not, if only they will make this effort, if only they will ponder it in their hearts. Ninety-nine out of a hundred of us are concerned in this problem. We are all of us true sons of Labour who have suffered the robbery of the wages of Competition. One word more. The Australian is apt to deprecate the socialism of the European or the American. The darker aspects of the European or American civilization are not striking here. They are here; they are more than incipient, very much more; but they are not striking. Let such an one pause. “We speak of that which we do know,” and, for the rest, not only do we bid “him that has ears, to hear,” but “him that has eyes, to see.”

Brothers all over the earth, brothers and sisters, you of that silent company whose speech is only in the unknown deeds of love, the unknown devotions, the unknown heroisms, it is to you we speak! Our heart is against your heart; you can feel it beat. Soul speaks to soul through lips whose utterance is a need. In your room alone, in your lonely walks, in the still hours of day and night, we will be with you. We will speak with you, we will plead with you, for these piteous ones. In the evening trees you shall hear the sound of our weeping. Our sobs shall shake in the wind of wintry nights. We are the spirit of those piteous ones, the wronged, the oppressed, the robbed, the murdered, and we bid you open your warm heart, your light-lit soul to us! We will thrill you with the clarion of hate and defiance and despair in the tempest of land and sea. You shall listen to us there also. We will touch your eyes and lips with fire. No, we will never let you go, till you are ours and theirs! And you too, O sufferers, you too shall stay with us, and shall have comfort. Look, we have suffered, we have agonized, we have longed to hasten the hour of rest. But beyond the darkness there is light, beyond the turbulence peace. “Courage, and be true to one another.” “We bid you hope!”

THIS BOOK

I give this Bookto you, —

Man or woman, girl or boy, labourer, mechanic, clerk, house-servant, whoever you may be, whose wages are not the worth of your work, —no, nor a fraction of it – whose wages are the minimum which you and those like you, pressed by the desire for life in the dreadful struggle of “Competition,” will consent to take from your Employers who, thanks to it, are able thus to rob you: —

I give it to you,

in the hope that you may see how you are being robbed,– how Capital that is won by paying you your competition wages is plunder,– how Rent that is won by the increased value of land that is owing to the industry of us all, is plunder,– how the Capitalist and Landowner who over-ride you, how the Master or Mistress who work you from morning to night, who domineer over you as servants and despise you (or what is worse, pity you) as beggars, are the men and women whose sole title to this is, that they have the audacity and skill to plunder you, and you the simplicity and folly not to see it and to submit to it: —

I give this Book to you,

in the hope that you may at last realize this, and in your own fashion never cease the effort to make your fellow-sufferers realize it: —

I give it to you,

in the hope that you may formally enrol yourself in the ranks of the Army of the Night, and that you will offer up the best that has been granted you of heart and soul and mind towards the working out of that better time when, in victorious peace, we silence our drums and trumpets, furl our banners, drag our cannons to their place of rest, and solemnly disarming ourselves, become citizens once more or, if soldiers, then soldiers of the Army of the Day!

SONGS OF THE ARMY OF THE NIGHT

“Blessed are the poor in spirit.. blessed are the mourners.. Ye are the salt of the earth.” —

The Good tidings as given by Matthew.PROEM“OUTSIDE LONDON.”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,Tramplings, breaths, movements, and a little light. —The marching of the Army of the Night!The stricken men, the mad brute-beasts are keeping   No more their places in the ditches or holes,But rise and join us, and the women, weeping   Beside the roadways, rise like demon-souls.Fill up the ranks!  What shimmers there so bright?The bayonets of the Army of the Night!Fill up the ranks!  We march in steadfast column,   In wavering lines yet forming more and more;Men, women, children, sombre, silent, solemn,   Rank follows rank like billows to the shore.Dawnwards we tramp, towards the day and light.On, on and up, the Army of the Night!

I

“ENGLAND.”

IN THE CAMPThis is a leader’s tent.  “Who gathers here?”   Enter and see and listen.  On the groundMen sit or stand, enter or disappear,   Dark faces and deep voices all around.One answers you.  “You ask who gathers here?   Companions!  Generals we have none, nor chief.What need is there?  The plan is all so clear —  The future’s hope, the present’s grim relief!“Food for us all, and clothes, and roofs come first.   The means to gain them?  This, our leaguered band!The hatred of the robber rich accursed   Keeps foes together, makes fools understand.“Beyond the present’s faith, the future’s hope   Points to the dawning hour when all shall beBut one.  The man condemned shall fit the rope   Around the hangman’s neck, and both be free!“The sun then rises on a happier land   Where Wealth and Labour sound but as one word.We drill, we train, we arm our leaguered band.   What is there more to tell you have not heard?”   Resolute, stern, menacing.  On the groundThey sit or stand, enter or disappear,   Dark faces and deep voices all around.“AXIOM.”Let him who toils, enjoy   Fruit of his toiling.Let him whom sweats annoy,   No more be spoiling.For we would have it be   That, weak or stronger,Not he who works, but he   Who works not, hunger!DRILLWhen day’s hard task’s done,   Eve’s scant meal partaken,Out we steal each one,   Weariless, unshaken.In small reeking squares,   Garbaged plots, we gather,Little knots and pairs,   Brother, sister, father.Then the word is given.   In their silent placesUnder lowering heaven,   Range our stern-set faces.Now we march and wheel   In our clumsy line,Shouldering sticks for steel,   Thoughts like bitter brine!Drill, drill, drill, and drill!   It is only thusConquer yet we will   Those who’ve conquered us.Patience, sisters, mothers!   We must not forgetDear dead fathers, brothers;   They must teach us yet.In that hour we see,   The hour of our desire,What shall their slayers be?   As the stubble to the fire!EVENING HYMN IN THE HOVELS“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!“We hew the stone and saw it, rear the city.   Others inhabit there in pleasant ease.We have no thing to ask of them save pity,   No answer they to give but what they please.Hallelujah!“Is it for ever, fathers, say, and mothers,   That we must toil and never know the light?Is it for ever, sisters, say, and brothers,   That they must grind us dead here in the night?Hallelujah!   Have strength and pleasure of the food we make?O we who hew, build, deck, shall we not also   The happiness that we have given partake?Hallelujah!”IN THE STREETLORD – You have done well, we say it.  You are dead,   And, of the man that with the right hand takesLess than the left hand gives, let it be said   He has done something for our wretched sakes.For those to whom you gave their daily bread   Rancid with God-loathed “charity,” their drinkPutrid with man-loathed “sin,” we bow our head   Grateful, as the great hearse goes by, and think.Yes, you have fed the flesh and starved the soul   Of thousands of us; you have taught too wellThe rich are little gods beyond control,   Save of your big God of the heaven and hell.We thank you.  This was pretty once, and right.Now it wears rather thin.  My lord, good night!“LIBERTY!”“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.Doubtless they were very splendid,   But they’re not for me and you.There were Greeks who fought and perished,   Won from Persians deathless graves.Had we lived then, we’re aware that   We’d have been those same Greeks’ slaves!Then a Roman came who loved us;   Cæsar gave men tongues and swords.Crying “Liberty,” they fought him,   Cato and his cut-throat lords.When he’d give a broader franchise,   Lift the mangled nations bowed,Crying “Liberty!” they killed him,   Brutus and his pandar crowd.We have read what history tells us,   O the truthful memory clings!Tacitus, the chartered liar,   Gloating over poisoned kings!“Liberty!”  The stale cry echoes   Past snug homesteads, tinsel thrones,Over smoking fields and hovels,   Murdered peasants’ bleaching bones.That’s the cry that mocked us madly,   Toiling in our living graves,When hell-mines sent up the chorus:   “Britons never shall be slaves!”“Liberty!”  We care not for it!   What we care for’s food, clothes, homes,For our dear ones toiling, waiting   For the time that never comes!IN THE EDGWARE ROAD(To LORD L-.)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!Her cheeks are rather fallen in; a mist   Glazes her eyes, for all their hungry glare.Her lips do not breathe balmy when they’re kissed.   And yet she’s not more loathsome than, I swear,Your grandmother at whist.My lord, she will admit, and need not frame   Excuses for herself, that she’s not chaste.First a young lover had her; then she came   From one man’s to another’s arms, with haste.Your mother did the same.Moreover, since she’s married, once or twice   She’s sold herself for certain things at night,To sell one’s body for the highest price   Of social ease and power, all girls think right.Your sister did it thrice.What, you’ll not buy?  You’ll curse at her instead? —   Her children are alone, at home, quite near.These winter streets, so gay at nights, ’tis said,   Have ’ticed the wanton out.  She could not hearHer children cry for bread!TO THE GIRLS OF THE UNIONSGirls, we love you, and love   Asks you to give againThat which draws it above,   Beautiful, without stain.  Give us weariless faithIn our Cause pure, passionate,Dearer than life and death,   Dear as the love that’s it!Give to the man who turns   Traitrous hands or forlornBack from the plough that burns,   Give him pitiless scorn!Let him know that no wife   Would bear him a fearless childTo hate and loathe the life   Of a leprous father defiled.Girls, we love you, and love   Asks you to give againThat which draws it above,   Beautiful, without stain!HAGARShe went along the road,   Her baby in her arms.   The night and its alarmsMade deadlier her load.Her shrunken breasts were dry;   She felt the hunger bite.   She lay down in the night,She and the child, to die.But it would wail, and wail,   And wail.  She crept away.   She had no word to say,Yet still she heard the wail.She took a jaggèd stone;   She wished it to be dead.   She beat it on the head;It only gave one moan.She has no word to say;   She sits there in the night.   The east sky glints with light,And it is Christmas Day!“WHY!”“Why is it we toil so?   Where go all the gains?What do we produce for it,   All our pangs and pains?”Why it is we toil so,   Is it because, like sheep,Since our fathers sought the shears,   We the same course keep.Where go all the gains?  Well,   It must be confessed,First the landlords take the rent,   And the masters take the rest.What do we produce for it?   Gentlemen! – and thenImitation snobs who’d be   Like the gentlemen!“What, is it for such as these   That we suffer thus?Fuddle-brained and vicious fools,   Vermin venomous?“What, is that why on the top   Creeps that Royal Louse,The prince of pheasants and cigars,   Of ballet-girls and grouse?”Yes, that’s why, my Christian friends,   They slave and slaughter us.England is made a dunghill that   Some bugs may breed and buzz.A VISITOR IN THE CAMP To Mary Robinson. 1 “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.”“Oh no, I am not lost!  Oh no, I’ve come here   (And I have brought my lute, see, in my hand),To see you, and to sing of all you suffer   To the great world, and make it understand!”“Well, say!  If one of those who’d robbed you thousands,   Dropped you a sixpence in the gutter whereYou lay and rotted, would you call her angel,   For all her charming smile and dainty air?”“Oh no, I come not thus!  Oh no, I’ve come here   With heart indignant, pity like a flame,To try and help you!” – “Pretty little lady,  It will be best you go back whence you came.”“‘Enthusiasms’ we have such little time for!   In our rude camp we drill the whole day long.When we return from out the serried battle,   Come, and we’ll listen to your pretty song!”“LORD LEITRIM.”My Lord, at last you have it!  Now we knowTruth’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 dustYour carrion will be purified.  Yet, see,Though your body perish, for your soul shall beAn immortality of infamy!“ANARCHISM.”’Tis not when I am here,   In these homeless homes,Where sin and shame and disease   And foul death comes;’Tis not when heart and brain   Would be still and forgetMen and women and children   Dragged down to the pit:But when I hear them declaiming   Of “liberty,” “order,” and “law,”The husk-hearted gentleman   And the mud-hearted bourgeois,That a sombre hateful desire   Burns up slow in my breastTo wreck the great guilty temple,   And give us rest!BELGRAVIA BY NIGHT“Move On!”“The foxes have holes,And the birds of the air have nests,But where shall the heads of the sons of menBe laid, be laid?”“Where the cold corpse rests,Where the sightless molesBurrow and yet cannot make it afraid,Rout but cannot wake it again,There shall the heads of the sons of menBe laid, laid!”JESUSWhere 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   Her wages of shame!Where is poor Jesus gone?   The good Samaritan,What does he there alone?   He stabs the wounded man!Where is poor Jesus gone,   The lamb they sacrificed?They’ve made God of his carrion   And labelled it “Christ!”PARALLELS FOR THE PIOUS“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,The plundered pittance of his hour,          The robber!”“He shakes his serpent tongue that lies,Wins trust for poisoned sophistriesAnd stabs me in the dark, and flies,          The assassin!”“He pits me in the dreadful fightAgainst my fellow.  Then he quiteStrips both his victims in the night,          The assassin!”“PRAYER.”This is what I prayIn 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 meekTill mine eyes behold,Till my lips have toldAll this hellish crime. —Then it’s sleeping time!TO THE CHRISTIANSTake, then, your paltry Christ,   Your gentleman God.We want the carpenter’s son,   With his saw and hod.We want the man who loved   The poor and oppressed,Who hated the rich man and king   And the scribe and the priest.We want the Galilean   Who knew cross and rod.It’s your “good taste” that prefers   A bastard God!“DEFEAT?”Who is it speaks of defeat? —   I tell you a Cause like oursIs greater than defeat can know;   It is the power of powers!As surely as the earth rolls round,   As surely as the glorious sunBrings the great world sea-wave,   Must our Cause be won!What is defeat to us? —   Learn what a skirmish tells,While the great Army marches on   To storm earth’s hells!TO JOHN RUSKIN(After reading his “Modern Painters.”)Yes, you do well to mock us, you   Who knew our bitter woe —To jeer the false, deny the true   In us blind struggling low,While, on your pleasant place aloft   With flowers and clouds and streams,At our black sweat and toil you scoffed   That marred your idle dreams.“Oh, freedom, what was that to us,”(You’d shout down to us there),“Except the freedom foul, vicious,   From all of good and fair?“Obedience, faith, humility,   To us were empty names.” —The like to you (might we reply)   Whose noisy life proclaimsPresumption, want of human love,   Impatience, filthy breath, 2The snob in soul who looks above,   Trampling on what’s beneath.When did you strive, in nobler part,   With love and gentleness,To help one soul, to win one heart   To joy and hope and peace?Go to, vain prophet, without faith   In God who maketh new,With hankerings for this putrid death,   This Flesh-feast of the Few,This Social Structure of red mud,   This Edifice of slime,Whose bricks are bones, whose mortar’s blood,   Whose pinnacle is Crime! —Go to, for we who strain our power   For light and warmth and scope,For wives’, for children’s happier hour,   Can teach you faith and hope.Hark to the shout of those who cleared   The Missionary Ridge!Look on those dead who never feared   The battle’s bloody bridge!Watch the stern swarm at that last breach   March up that came not thence —And learn Democracy can teach   Divine obedience. 3Pass through that South at last brought low   Where loyal freemen live,And learn Democracy knows how   To utterly forgive.Come then, and take this free-given bread   Of us who’ve scarce enough;Hush your proud lips, bow down your head   And worship human love!TO THE EMPEROR WILLIAMYou 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 ofThe filthy sty whose latest litter clingRound England’s flesh-pots, gorged and gluttoning.   No, but on flaming battle-fields, in courts   Of honour and of danger old resorts,The name of Hohen-Zollern clear doth ring.O Father William, you, not falsely weak,   Who never spared the rod to spoil the child,Our mighty Germany, we only speak   To bless you with a blessing sweet and mild,Ere that near heaven your weary footsteps seek   Where love with liberty is reconciled.SONG OF THE DISPOSSESSED“to jesus.”“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,   And make them glad!“Our wives and daughters are here,   Knowing wrong and shame’s touchBid them be of good cheer   Who have lovèd much.“And we, we are robbed and oppressed,   Even as thine were.Tell us of comfort and rest,   Banish despair!“Be with us by day, by night,   O lover, O friend;Hold before us thy light   Unto the end!”ARTYes, let Art go, if it must be   That with it men must starve —If Music, Painting, Poetry   Spring from the wasted hearth.Pluck out the flower, however fair,   Whose beauty cannot bloom,(However sweet it be, or rare)   Save from a noisome tomb.These social manners, charm and ease,   Are hideous to who knowsThe degradation, the disease   From which their beauty flows.So, Poet, must thy singing be;   O Painter, so thy scene;Musician, so thy melody,   While misery is queen.Nay, brothers, sing us battle-songs   With clear and ringing rhyme;Nay, show the world its hateful wrongs,   And bring the better time! THE PEASANTS’ REVOLT. 4 Thro’ the mists of years,   Thro’ the lies of men,Your bloody sweat and tears,Your desperate hopes and fears   Reach us once again.Brothers, who long ago,   For life’s bitter sakeToiled and suffered so,Robbery, insult, blow,   Rope and sword and stake:Toiled and suffered, till   It burst, the brightening hope,“Might and right” and “will and skill,”That scorned, and does, and will,   Sword and stake and rope!Wat and Jack and John,   Tyler, Straw, and Ball,Souls that faltered not,Hearts like white iron hot,   Still we hear your call!Yes, your “bell is rung,”   Yes, for “now is time!”Come hither, every one,Brave ghosts whose day’s not done,   Avengers of old rime, —Come and lead the way,   Hushed, implacable,Suffering no delay,Forgetting not that day   Dreadful, hateful, fell,When the liar king,   The liar gentlemen,Wrought that foulest thing,Robbing, murdering   Men who’d trusted them! 5Come and lead the way,   Hushed, implacable.What shall stop us, say,On that day, our day? —   Not unloosened hell!“ANALOGY.”(To D- L-.)Had you lived when a tyrant king   Strove to make all the slaves of one,With nobles and with churchmen youHad stood unflinching, pure and true,To annihilate that hateful thing   Green Runnymeade beat out of John?Had you lived when a wanton crew,   Flash scoundrels of a day outdone,Trod down the toilers birth derides,With Cromwell and his IronsidesThe brave days had discovered you,   Where Naseby saw the gallants run?And yet you, – this same knight in list   For freedom in her narrow dawnAgainst that one, against those few,Vile king, vile nobles – you, yet youStand by the bloody Capitalist,   Fight with the pandar Gentleman!IN TRAFALGAR SQUAREThe 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   As they went along;Their scarf-covered breasts heaved up, as they sung   Their defiant song.It was not too clean, their feminine lay,   But it thrilled me quiteWith its challenge to task-master villainous day   And infamous night,With its threat to the robber rich, the proud,   The respectable free.And I laughed and shouted to them aloud,   And they shouted to me!“Girls, that’s the shout, the shout we shall utter   When with rifles and spades,We stand, with the old Red Flag aflutter,   On the barricades!”A STREET FIGHT (To Mr F-.) 6 Sir, we approve your curling lip and nose   At this vile sight.These men, these women are brute beasts? – Who knows,   Sir, but that you are right?Panders and harlots, rogues and thieves and worse,   We are a crewWhose pitiful plunder’s honoured in the purse   Of gentlemen like you.Whom holy Competition’s taught (like us)   “What’s thine is mine!” —How we must love you who have made us thus,   You may perhaps divine!IN AN EAST END HOVELTO A WORKMAN, A WOULD-BE SUICIDEMan of despair and death,Bought and slaved in the gangs,Starved and stripped and leftTo the pitiful pitiless night,Away with your selfish thoughts!Touch not your ignorant life!Are there no masters of slaves,Jeering, cynical, strong —Are there no brigands (say),With the words of Christ on their lipsAnd the daggers under their cloaks —Is there not one of theseThat you can steal on and kill?O as the Swiss mountaineerDogged on the perilous heightsHis disciplined conqueror foes: 7Caught up one in his armsAnd, laughing exultantly,Plunged with him to the abyss:So let it be with you!An eye for an eye, and a toothFor a tooth, and a life for a life!Tell it, this hateful strongContemptuous hypocrite world,Tell it that, if we must liveAs dogs and as worse than dogs,At least we can die like men!Tell it there is a woeNot for the conquered alone! 8An eye for an eye, and a toothFor a tooth, and a life for a life!DUBLIN AT DAWNIn the chill grey summer dawn-light   We pass through the empty streets;The rattling wheels are all silent;   No friend his fellow greets.Here and there, at the corners,   A man in a great-coat stands;A bayonet hangs by his side, and   A rifle is in his hands.This is a conquered city;   It speaks of war not peace;And that’s one of the English soldiers   The English call “police.”You see, at the present moment   That noble country of mineIs boiling with indignation   At the memory of a “crime.”In a path in the Phœnix Park where   The children romped and ran,An Irish ruffian met his doom,   And an English gentleman.For a hundred and over a hundred   Years on the country sideMen and women and children   Have slaved and starved and died,That those who slaved and starved them   Might spend their earnings then,And the Irish ruffians have a “good time,”   And the English gentlemen.And that’s why at the present moment   That noble country of mineIs boiling with indignation   At the memory of a “crime.”For the Irish ruffians (they tell me),   And it looks as if ’twere true,And the English gentlemen are so scarce,   We could not spare those two!In the chill grey summer dawn-light   We pass through the empty streets;The rattling wheels are all silent;   No friend his fellow greets.Here and there, at the corners,   A man in a great-coat stands;A bayonet hangs by his side, and   A rifle is in his hands.This is a conquered city;   It speaks of war not peace;And that’s one of the English soldiers   The English call “police.”THE CAGED EAGLE..  I went the other dayTo see the birds and beasts they keep enmewedIn the London Zoo.  One of the first I saw —One of the first I noticed, was an eagle.Ragged, befouled, within his iron barsHe sat without a movement or a sound,And, when I stood and pitying looked at him,I saw his great sad eyes that winkless gazedOut to the horizon sky.  I passed from there,And walked about the gardens, hither and thither,Till all the afternoon was spent.  Returning thenTo seek my home, again by chance I passedThe eagle’s cage, and stood again, and looked,And saw his great sad eyes that winkless gazedOut to the horizon sky.  So I went home.The eagle is Ireland!“IRELAND.”O we have loved you through cold and rain   And pitiless frost,Consuming our offering of blood and of brainGladly again and again and again,   Though it all seemed lost,       Ireland, Ireland!O we will fight, fight on for you till   Your anguish is past,The wronged ones righted, the tyrants still. —Though God has not saved you, yet we will,   At the last, at the last,       Ireland, Ireland!O we will love you in warmth and light   And the happy day,When you have forgotten the terrible night,Standing proud and beautiful bright   For ever and aye,       Ireland, Ireland!TO CHARLES PARNELLOne thing we praise you for that is past praise —   The dauntless eyes that faced the rain and night,   The hand that never wearied in the fight,Till, through the dark’s despair, the dawn’s delays,It rose, that vision of forgotten days,   Ireland, a nation in her right and might,   As fearless of the lightning as the Light, —Freedom, the noon-tide sun that shines and stays!O brave, O pure, O hater of the wrong,   (The wrong that is as one with England’s name,   Tyranny with cant of liberty, and shameWith boast of righteousness), to you belong   Trust for the hate that blinds our foes like flame,Love for the hope that makes our hearts so strong!AN “ASSASSIN.”.. They caught them at the bend.  He and his sonSat in the car, revolvers in their laps.From either side the stone-walled wintry roadThere flashed thin fire-streaks in the rainy dusk.The father swayed and fell, shot through the chest.The son was up, but one more fire-streak leapedClose from the pitch-black of a thick-set bushNot five yards from him, and lit all the faceOf him whose sweetheart walked the Dublin streetsFor lust of him who gave one yell and fellFlat on the stony road, a sweltering corse.Then they came out, the men who did this thing,And looked upon their hatred’s retribution,While heedlessly the rattling car fled on.Grey-haired old wolf, your letch for peasants’ blood,For peasants’ sweat turned gold and silver and bronze,Is done, is done, for ever and ever is done!O foul young fox, no more young girls’ fresh lipsShall bruise and bleed to cool your lecher’s lust.Slowly from out the great high terraced cloudsThe round moon sailed.  The dead were left alone.* * * * *I talked with one of those who did this thing,A coughing half-starved lad, mere skin and bone.I said: “They found upon those dead men, gold.Why did you not take it?”  Then with proud-raised head,He looked at me and said: “Sorr, we’re not thaves!”Brother, from up the maimed and mangled earth,Strewn with our flesh and bones, wet with our blood,Let that great word go up to unjust heavenAnd smite the cheek of the devil they’ve called “God!”“HOLY RUSSIA.”Crouched in the terrible land,The circle of pitiless ice,With frozen bloody feetAnd her pestilential summer’sFever-throb in her brow,Look, in her deep slow eyesThe mists of her sleep of faithStir, and a gleam of light,The ray of a blood-red sun,Beams out into the dusk.From far away, from the west,From the east, from the south, there comeFaint sweet breaths of the breezeOf plenteous warmth and light.And she moves, and around her neckShe feels the iron-scaled SnakeWhose fangs suck at the heartHid by her tattered dress,By her lean and hanging teat.Russia, O land of faith,O realm of the ageless Slav,O oppressed one of eternity,This darkest hour is the hour,The hour of the coming dawn!Europe the rank, the corrupt,Lies stretched out at your feet.Turkey, India, lo all,East and south, it is yours!Years, years ago a nation, 9Oppressed as you are oppressed,Burst her bonds and leaped out,A volcanic sea-wave of fire,Quenched at last but in blood,Though not before the red sprayDashed the Pyramids, the Escurial,Rome and your own grey Kremlin.That was the great sea-waveOf a nation that disbelieved,Of a nation that had not faith!What shall the sea-wave beOf this race of eternal belief,This nation of a passionate faith? PÈRE-LA-CHAISE. 10 (Paris.)I stood in Père-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.Here where I stand, they slew you, brothers, whom   Hell’s wrongs unutterable had made as mad.The rifle-shots re-echoed in his tomb,   The gilded scoundrel’s who had been so glad.O Morny, O blood-sucker of thy race!   O brain, O hand that wrought out empire thatThe lust in one for power, for tinsel place,   Might rest; one lecher’s hungry heart grow fat, —Is it for nothing, now and evermore,   O you whose sin in life had death in ease,The murder of your victims beats the door   Wherein your careless carrion lies at peace? AUX TERNES. 11 (Paris.)She. – “Up and down, up and down,          From early eve to early day.      Life is quicker in the town;          When you’ve leisure, anyway!      “Down and up, down and up!          O will no one stop and speak?      I would really like to sup,          And my limbs are heavy and weak.      “What’s my price, sir?  I’m no Jew.          If with me you wish to sleep,      ’Tis five francs, sir.  Surely you          Will admit that that is cheap?”He. – “Christ, if you are not stone blind,         Stone deaf also, you know it is     Christian towns leave far behind         Sodom and those other cities.     “Bid your Father strike this town,         Wipe it utterly away!     Weary, hungry, up and down         From early eve to early day?     “Magdalen knew nought like this;         She had food and roof above;     Seven devils, too, did she possess;         This poor soul had but one – love!     “O my sister, take me, kill me!         I am one of those who once     Only cared to feast and fill me         On these robbed and murdered ones.     “Kill me?  Nay, but love me; listen.         I have too a gospel word,     Fit to make still, dull eyes glisten,         And, like Christ’s, it brings a sword!     “No, Christ is not deaf nor blind;         He’s but dust in Syrian ground,     And his Father has declined         To a parson’s phrase, a sound.     “Not by such, then, but by us         These hell-wrongs must be redressed.     Take this morsel venomous;         Nourish it within your breast.     “You must live on, live and hate;         Conquer wrath, despair and pain;     For “we bid you hope” and wait         Till the Red Flag flies again:     “Till once more the people rise,         Once more, once and only once,     Blood-red hands and blazing eyes         Of the robbed and murdered ones!     “So good night, dear desperate heart.         (Nay, ’tis sun-bright day we keep.)     Soon we meet, though now we part.         Kiss me.. Take it.. Go and sleep!”“THE TRUTH.”Come then, let us at least know what’s the truth.   Let us not blink our eyes and sayWe did not understand; old age or youth   Benumbed our sense or stole our sight away.It is a lie – just that, a lie – to declare   That wages are the worth of work.No; they are what the Employer wills to spare   To let the Employee sheer starvation shirk.They’re the life-pittance Competition leaves,   The least for which brother’ll slay brother.He who the fruits of this hell-strife receives,   He is a thief, an assassin, and none other!It is a lie – just that, a lie – to declare   That Rent’s the interest on just gains.Rent’s the thumb-screw that makes the worker share   With him who worked not the produce of his pains.Rent’s the wise tax the human tape-worm knows.   The fat he takes; the life-lean leaves.The holy Landlord is, as we suppose,   Just this – the model of assassin-thieves!What is the trick the rich-man, then, contrives?   How play my lords their brilliant rôles? —They live on the plunder of our toiling lives,   The degradation of our bodies and souls!TO THE SONS OF LABOURGrave this deep in your hearts,Forget not the tale of the past!Never, never believeThat any will help you, or can,Saving only yourselves!What have the gentlemen done,Peerless haters of wrong,Byrons and Shelleys, what?They stand great famous names,Demi-gods to their own,Shadows far off, alienTo us and ours for ever.Those who love them and hateThe crime, the injustice they hated,What can they do but shout,Win a name from our woes,And leave us just as we were?No, but resolutely turned,Our wants, our desires made clear,And clear the means that shall win them,Drill and drill and drill!Then when the day is come,When the royal battle-flag’s up,When blood has been spilled in vainIn timid half-hearted war,Then let the Cromwell rise,The simple, the true-souled man;Then let Grant come forth,The calm, the determined comrade,But deep in their hearts one hate,Deep in their souls one thought,To bring the iniquity low,To make the People free!Ah, for such as theseWe with the same heart-hate,We with the same soul-thought,Will fall to our destined placesIn the ranks of the great New Model, 12In the Army that sees aheadMarston, Naseby, Whitehall,The Wilderness, Petersburg, – yes,But beyond the blood and the smoke,Beyond the struggle and death,The Union victorious safe,The Commonwealth glorious free!TO THE ARTISTSYou tell me these great lords have raised up Art:I say they have degraded it.  Look you,When ever did they let the poet sing,The painter paint, the sculptor hew and cast,The music raise her heavenly voice, exceptTo praise them and their wretched rule o’er men?Behold our English poets that were poorSince these great lords were rich and held the state:Behold the glories of the German land,Poets, musicians, driven, like them, to deathUnless they’d tune their spirits’ harps to playDrawing-room pieces for the chattering foolsWho aped the taste for Art or for a leer.Go to, no Art was ever noble yet,Noble and high, the speech of godlike men,When fetters bound it, be they gold or flowers.All that is noblest, highest, greatest, best,Comes from the Galilean peasant’s hut, comes fromThe Stratford village, the Ayrshire plough, the shopThat gave us Chaucer, the humble Milton’s trade —Bach’s, Mozart’s, great Beethoven’s, – And these are theyWho knew the People, being what they knew!Go to, if in the future years no strain,No picture of earth’s glory like to whatYour Artists raised for that small clique or thisOf supercilious imbecilities —O if no better demi-gods of ArtCan rise save those whose barbarous tinsel yetMakes hideous all the beauty of old homes —Then let us seek the comforts of despairIn democratic efforts dead and gone:Weep with Pheideian Athens, sigh an hourWith Raffaelle’s Florence, beat the head and breastO’er Shakspere’s England that from Milton’s tookIn lips the name that leaped from lead and flameFrom out her heart against the Spanish guns!“ONE AMONG SO MANY.”..  In a dark street she met and spoke to me,Importuning, one wet and mild March night.We walked and talked together.  O her taleWas very common; thousands know it all!Seduced; a gentleman; a baby coming;Parents that railed; London; the child born dead;A seamstress then, one of some fifty girls“Taken on” a few months at a dressmaker’sIn the crush of the “season;” thirteen shillings a week!The fashionable people’s dresses done,And they flown off, these fifty extra girlsSent – to the streets: that is, to work that givesScarcely enough to buy the decent clothesRespectable employers all demandOr speak dismissal.  Well, well, well, we know!And she – “Why, I have gone on down and down,And there’s the gutter, look, that I shall die in!”“My dear,” I say, “where hope of all but thatIs gone, ’tis time, I think, life were gone too.”She looks at me.  “That I should kill myself?” —“That you should kill yourself.” – “That would be sin,And God would punish me!” – “And will not GodPunish for this?”  She pauses: then whispers:“No, no, He will forgive me, for He knows!”I laughed aloud: “And you,” she said, “and you,Who are so good, so noble”..  “Noble?  Good?”I laughed aloud, the great sob in my throat.O my poor darling, O my little lost sheepOf this vast flock that perishes aloneOut in the pitiless desert! – Yet she’d speak:She’d ask me: she’d entreat: she’d demonstrate.O I must not say that! I must believe!Who made the sea, the leaves so green, the skySo big and blue and pure above it all?O my poor darling, O my little lost sheep,Entreat no more and demonstrate no more;For I believe there is a God, a GodNot in the heaven, the earth, or the waters; no,But in the heart of man, on the dear lipsOf angel women, of heroic men!O hopeless wanderer that would not stay,(“It is too late, I cannot rise again!”)O saint of faith in love behind the veils,(“You must believe in God, for you are good!”),O sister who made holy with your kiss,Your kiss in that wet dark mild night of MarchThere in the hideous infamous London streetsMy cheek, and made my soul a sacred place,O my poor darling, O my little lost sheep!THE NEW LOCKSLEY HALL“forty years after.”Comrade, yet a little further I would go before the nightCloses round and chills in darkness all the glorious sunset light —Yet a little, by the cliff there, till the stately home I seeOf the man who once was with us, comrade once with you and me!Nay, but leave me, pass alone there; stay awhile and gaze againOn the various-jewelled waters and the dreamy southern main,For the evening breeze is sighing in the quiet of the hillsMoving down in cliff and terrace to the singing sweet sea-rills,While the river, silent-stealing, thro’ the copse and thro’ the leaWinds her waveless way eternal to the welcome of the sea.Yes, within that green-clad homestead, gardened grounds and velvet easeOf a home where culture reigneth and the chambers whisper peace,Is the man, the seer and singer, who (ah, years and years away!)Lifted up a face of gladness at the breaking of the day.For the noontide’s desperate ardours that had seen the Roman townWrap the boy Keats, “by the hungry generations trodden down,”In his death-shroud with the ashes of the fairy child of storm,Fluttering skylark in the breakers, caught and smothered by the foam,And had closed those eyes heroic, weary for the final peace.Byron maimed and maddened, strangled in the anguish that was Greece —For this noontide passed to darkness, brooding doubt and wild dismay,Where the silly sparrows chirruped and the eagles swooped away,Till once more the trampled Peoples and the murdered soul of manRaised a haggard face half-wondering where the new-born day began,Where the sign of Faith’s renewal, Faith’s, and Hope’s, and Love’s, outgrewIn the golden sun arising; and we hailed it, we and you!O you hailed it, and your heart beat, and your pretty woman’s lays,In the fathomless vibration of our rapturous amaze,Died for ever on your harpstrings, and you rose and struck a chordHigh, full, clear, heroic, godlike, “for the glory of the Lord!”Noble words you spoke; we listened; and we dreamed the day had comeWhen the faith of God and Christ should sound one cry with Man’s freedom —When the men who stood beside us, eager with hell’s troops to cope,Radiant, thrilled exultant, proud, with the magnificence of hope!“Forward! forward!” ran our watch-word.  “Forward! forward!” by our sideYou gave back the glorious summons.  Would that day that you had died!Better lying fallen, death-struck, breathless, bleeding, on your face,With your bright sword pointing onward, dying happy in your place!Better to have passed in spirit from the battle-storm’s eclipseWith the great Cause in your heart and with the war-shout on your lips!Better to have fallen charging, having known the nobler time,In the fiery cheer and impulse of our serried battle-line —Than to stand and watch your comrades, in the hail of fire and lead,Up the slopes and thro’ the smoke-clouds, thro’ the dying and the dead,Till the sun strikes through a moment, to our one victorious shout,On our bayonets bristling brightly as we carry the redoubt!O half-hearted, pusillanimous, faltering heart and fuddled brainThat remembered Egypt’s flesh-pots, and turned back and dreamed again —Left the plain of blood and battle for the quiet of the hills,And the sunny soft contentment that the woody homestead fills.There you sat and sang of Egypt, of its sober solid graves,(Pyramids, you call them, Sphinxes), mortared with the blood of slaves,Houses, streets and stately palaces, the mart, the regal stewWhere freedom “broadens down” so slow it stops with lords and you!O you mocked at our confusion, O you told us of our crimes,Us ungentle, not like warriors of the sweet idyllic times,Flowers of eunuch-hearted kings and courts where pretty poet knightsTilted gaily or slew stake-armed peasants, hundreds, in the fights?O you drew the hideous picture of our bravest and our best,Patient martyrs, desperate swordsmen, for the Cause that gives not rest —Men of science, “vivisectors!” – democrats, the “rout of beasts” —Writers, essayists and poets, “Belial’s prophets, Moloch’s priests!”Coward, you have made the great refusal? you have won the gilded praiseOf the wringers of his heart’s-blood from the peasant’s sunless days,Of the lord and the land-owner, of the rich man who has boundLabour on the wheel to break him, strew his rent limbs on the ground,With a vulture eye aglare on brothers, sisters that he had,Crying, “Troops and guns to shoot them, if the hunger drive them mad!”Coward, faithless, unbelieving, that had courage but to takeWhat of pleasure and of beauty men have won for manhood’s sake,Blustering long and loudest at the hideousness and painThese you praise have brought upon us; blustering long and loud againAt our agony and anguish in this desperate fight of ours,Grappling with anarch custom and the darkness and the powers!O begone, then, from among us!  Echo not, however faint,Our great watch-word, our great war-shout, sweet and sickly poet-saint!Sit there dreaming in your gardens, looking out upon the sea,Till the night-time closes round you and the wind is on the lea.Enter then within your chambers in the rich and quiet light;Never think of us who struggle in the tempest and the night.Soothe your fancy with your visions; bend a gracious senile earTo the praise your guests are murmuring in the tone you love to hear.Honoured of your Queen, and honoured of the gentlest and the best,Lord and commoner and rich-man, smirking tenant, shopman, priest,All distinguished and respectable, the shiny sons of light,O what, O what are these who call you coward in the night?Ay, what are we who struggled for the cause of Science, say,Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Häckel, marshalling our stern array?We who raised the cry for Culture, Goethe’s spirit leading on,Marching gladly with our captains, Renan, Arnold, Emerson?We, we are not tinkers, tinkers of the kettle cracked and broke,Tailors squatted cross-legged, patching at the greasy worn-out cloak!We are those that faced mad Fortune, cried: “The Truth, and only she!Onward, upward!  If we perish, we at least will perish free!”We have lost our souls to win them, in the house and in the streetFalling stabbed and poisoned, making a victory of defeat.We have lost the happy present, we have paid death’s heavy debt,We have won, have won the Future, and its sons shall not forget!Enter, then, within your chamber in the rich and quiet light;Never think of us who struggle in the tempest and the night;Spread your nostrils to the incense, hearken to the murmured hymnOf the praising people, rising from the temple fair and dim.Ah, but we here in the tempest, we here struggling in the night,See the worshippers out-stealing; see the temple emptying quite;See the godhead turning ghostlike; see the pride of name and famePaling slowly, sad and sickly, with forgetfulness and shame!.Darker, darker grows the night now, louder, louder cries the wind;I can hear the dash of breakers and the deep sea moves behind,I can see the ghostlike phalanx rushing on the crumbling shore,Slowly but surely shattering its rampart evermore.And my comrade’s voice is calling, and his solitary cryOn the great dark swift air-currents like Fate’s summons sweepeth by.Farewell, then, whom once I loved so, whom a boy I thrilled to hearUrging courage and reliance, loathing acquiescent fear.I must leave you; I must wander to a strange and distant land,Facing all that Fate shall give me with her hard unequal hand —I once more anew must face them, toil and trouble and disease,But these a man may face and conquer, for there waits him death and peaceAnd the freedom from dishonour and denial e’er confessedOf what he knows is truest, what most beautiful and best!O farewell, then!  I must leave you.  You have chosen.  You are right.You have made the great refusal; you have shunned the wind and night.You have won your soul, and won it – No, not lost it, as they tell —Happy, blest of gods and monarchs, O a long, a long farewell!Freshwater, Isle of Wight.FAREWELL TO THE MARKET“susannah and mary-jane.”Two little darlings alone,   Clinging hand in hand;Two little girls come out   To see the wonderful land!Here round the flaring stalls   They stand wide-eyed in the throng,While the great, the eloquent huckster   Perorates loud and long.They watch those thrice-blessed mortals,   The dirty guzzling boys,Who partake of dates, periwinkles,   Ices and other joys.And their little mouths go wide open   At some of the brilliant sightsThat little darlings may see in the road   Of Edgware on Saturday nights.The eldest’s name is Susannah;   She was four years old last May.And Mary-Jane, the youngest,   Is just three years old to-day.And I know all about their cat, and   Their father and mother too,And “Pigshead,” their only brother,   Who got his head jammed in the flue.And they know several particulars   Of a similar sort of me,For we went up and down together   For over an hour, we three.And Susannah walked beside me,   As became the wiser and older,Fast to one finger, but Mary-Jane   Sat solemnly up on my shoulder.And we bought some sweets, and a monkey   That climbed up a stick “quite nice.”And then last we adjourned for refreshments,   And the ladies had each an ice.And Susannah’s ice was a pink one,   And she sucked it up so quick,But Mary-Jane silently proffered   Her ice to me for a lick.And then we went home to mother,   And we found her upon the floor,And father was trying to balance   His shoulders against the door.And Susannah said “O” and “Please, sir,   We’ll go in ourselves, sir!”  AndWe kissed one another and parted,   And they stole in hand in hand.And it’s O for my two little darlings   I never shall see again,Though I stand for the whole night watching   And crying here in the rain!