Songs of the Army of the Night

II

“HERE AND THERE.”

IN THE PIT“chant of the firemen.”“This is the steamer’s pit.   The ovens like dragons of fireGlare thro’ their close-lidded eyes   With restless hungry desire.“Down from the tropic night   Rushes the funnelled air;Our heads expand and fall in;   Our hearts thump huge as despair.“’Tis we make the bright hot blood   Of this throbbing inanimate thing;And our life is no less the fuel   Than the coal we shovel and fling.“And lest of this we be proud   Or anything but meek,We are well cursed and paid —   Ten shillings a week!”Round, round, round in its tunnel   The shaft turns pitiless strong,While lost souls cry out in the darkness:   “How long, O Lord, how long?”A MAHOMMADAN SHIP FIREMANUp from the oven pit,   The hell where poor men toil,At the sunset hour he comes   Clean-clothed, washed from soil.On the fo’c’s’le head he kneels,   His face to the hallowed West.He prays, and bows and prays.   Does he pray for death and rest?TO INDIAO 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,The loathsome shape twists, chaining foot and hand —   O from this death-swoon must thou never wake,   From limbs enfranchised these foul fetters to shake,And, proud among the nations, to rise and stand?Nay, but thine eyes, thine eyes wherein there stays   The patience of that august faith that scornsThe tinsel creed of Christ, dream still and gazeWhere, not within the timeless East and haze,   The haunt of that wan moon with fading horns,   There breaks the first of Himalayan morns!TO ENGLANDIThere 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   And splendid ire,When from Canadian snows to Indian suns   Pitt’s soul was fire.O that in days like these were, fair and free   From shame and scorn,Fate had allowed, benignly, pityingly   That I was born!O that, if struck, then struck with glorious wounds,   I bore apart(Not torn with fangs of leprous coward hounds)   My bleeding heart!IIWe hate you – not because of cruel deeds   Staining a glorious effort.  They who live   Learn in this earth to give and to forgive,Where heart and soul are noble and fate’s needsImperious: No, nor yet that cruel seeds   Of power and wrong you’ve sown alternative,   We hate you, we your sons who yet believeThat truth and justice are not empty creeds!No, but because of greed and golden pay,   Wages of sin and death: because you smotherYour conscience, making cursèd all the day.   Bible in one hand, bludgeon in the other,   Cain-like you come upon and slay your brother,And, kneeling down, thank God for it, and pray!IIII whom you fed with shame and starved with woe,   I wheel above you,Your fatal vulture, for I hate you so,   I almost love you!I smell your ruin out.  I light and croak   My sombre lore,As swaggering you go by, O heart of oak   Rotten to the core!Look westward!  Ireland’s vengeful eyes are cast   On freedom won.Look eastward!  India stirs from sleep at last.   You are undone!Look southward, where Australia hears your voice,   And turns away!O brutal hypocrite, she makes her choice   With the rising day!Foul Esau, you who sold your high birthright   For gilded mud,Who did the wrong and, priestlike, called it right,   And swindled God!The hour is gone of insult, pain and patience;   The hour is comeWhen they arise, the faithful mightier nations,   To drag you down!IVEngland, the land I loved   With passionate pride,For hate of whom I live   Who for love had died,Can I, while shines the sun,   That hour regainWhen I again may come to thee   And love again?No, not while that flag   Of greed and lustFlaunts in the air, untaught   To drag the dust! —Never, till expiant,   I see you kneel,And, brandished, gleams aloft   The foeman’s steel!Ah, then to speed, and laugh,   As my heart caught the knife:“Mother, I love you!  Here,   Here is my life!”HONG-KONG LYRICSIAt 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,   A motley crew,Junks, sampans, all East’s swarming jubilation,   I watched and knew.Then, as I stood, sweet sudden sounds out-swelling   On the boon breeze,The church-bells’ chiming echoes rang out, telling   Of inland peace.O English chimes, your music rising and falling   I cannot praise,Although to me it come sweet-sad recalling   Dear childish days.Yet, English chimes, – last links of chains that sever,   Worn out and done,That land and creed that I have left for ever, —   Ring on, ring on!IIThere is much in this sea-way city   I have not met with before,But one or two things I notice   That I seem to have known of yore.In the lovely tropical verdure,   In the streets, behold I canThe hideous English buildings   And the brutal English man!IIII stand and watch the soldiers   Marching up and down,Above the fresh green cricket-ground   Just outside the town.I stand and watch and wonder   When in the English landThis poor fool Tommy Atkins   Will learn and understand?Zulus, and Boers, and Arabs,   All fighting to be free,Men and women and children,   Murdered and maimed has he.In India and in Ireland   He’s held the People down,While the robber English gentleman   Took pound and penny and crown.To make him false to his order,   What was it that they gave —To make him his brother’s oppressor?   The clothes and pay of a slave!O thou poor fool, Tommy Atkins,   Thou wilt be wise that dayWhen, with eager eyes and clenched teeth,   Thou risest up to say:“This is our well-loved England,   And I’ll free it, if I can,From every rotten bourgeois   And played-out gentleman!”IV “happy valley.” 13 There is a valley green that lies   ’Mid hills, the summer’s bower.The many coloured butterflies   Flutter from flower to flower.And round one lush green side of it,   In gardened homes are laid,With grief and care compassionate,   The people of the dead.There all the voicing summer day   They sing, the happy rills.No noisy sound awakes away   The echo of the hills.A GLIMPSE OF CHINAIin a sampan(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!Past the rice-fields green low-lying,   Where the sea-gull’s winging downFrom the fleets of junks and sampans   And the ancient Chinese Town!IIin a chair(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  A sun-shaft broadens and dropsOn the brown bare crowd slow-passing  The crowd of the open shops.We move on over the bridges   With their straight-hewn blocks of stone.And their quaint grey animal figures,   And the booths the hucksters own.Behind a linen awning   Sits an ancient wight half-dead,And a little dear of a girl is   Examining – his head.On a bended bamboo shouldered,   Bearing a block of stone,Two worn-out coolies half-naked   Utter their grunting groan.Children, almond-eyed beauties,   Impossibly mangy curs,Take part in the motley stream of   Insouciant passengers.This is the dream, the vision   That comes to me and greets —The vision of Retribution   In the labyrinthine streets!III“caste.”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.These Chinese do not fawn with servile lips;   They lift up equal eyes that ask and scan.Their degradation has escaped at least   That choicest curse of all – the gentleman!IV over the samovar. 14 (Foo-chow.)“Yes, I used always to think   That you Russians knewHow to make the good drink   As none others do.“And I thought moreover,   (Not with the epicures),You might search the world over   For such women as yours.“In both these matters now   I perceive I was right,And I really can’t tell you how   Much I delight“In my third (Thanks, another cup!)   Idea of the fun,When your country gets up   And follows the sun!“And just as in Europe, see,   There’s a conqueror nation,So why not in Asia be   A like jubilation?“Taught as well as organized, 15   The eternal Coolie,From being robbed and despised,   Takes to cutting throats duly! “But – please, don’t be flurried;  For I daresay by thenYou’ll be comfortably buried,   Ladies and gentlemen!“No more, thanks!  I must be going!   I’m so glad to have made thisOpportunity of knowing   Some more Russian ladies!”TO JAPANSimple you were, and good.  No kindlier heart   Beat than the heart within your gentle breast.   Labour you had, and happiness, and rest,And were the maid of nations.  Now you startTo feverish life, feeling the poisonous smart   Upon your lips of harlot lips close-pressed,   The lips of her who stands among the restWith greasy righteous soul and rotten heart.O sunrise land, O land of gentleness,   What madness drives you to lust’s dreadful bed?O thrice accursèd England, wretchedness   For ever be on you, of whom ’tis said,Prostitute plague-struck, that you catch and kiss   Innocent lives to make them foully dead! DAI BUTSU. 16 (Kama Kura.)He sits.  Upon the kingly head doth rest   The round-balled wimple, and the heavy rings   Touch on the shoulders where the shadow clings.The downward garment shows the ambiguous breast;   One learn the secret of unspeakable things;   But the dread gaze descends with shudderings,To the veiled couched knees, the hands and thumbs close-pressed.O lidded, downcast eyes that bear the weight   Of all our woes and terrible wrong’s increase:   Proud nostrils, lips proud-perfecter than these,With what a soul within you do you wait!Disdain and pity, love late-born of hate,   Passion eternal, patience, pain and peace!“ENGLAND.”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,How I ever loved that land   That now I hate!THE FISHERMAN(Mindanao, Philippines.)In the dark waveless sea,   Deep blue under deep blue,The fisher drifts by on the tide   In his small pole-balanced canoe.Above him the cloud-clapped hills   Crown the dense jungly sweeps;The cocoa-nut groves hedge round   The hut where the beach-wave sleeps.Is it not better so   To be as this savage is,Than to live the wage-slave’s life   Of hopeless agonies?A SOUTH-SEA ISLANDERAloll 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;And the sob swells up in my heart —   In my heart that understands.Dear, in the English country,The hatefullest land on earth,The mothers are starved and the children die,And death is better than birth!NEW GUINEA “CONVERTS.”I saw them as they were born,   Erect and fearless and free,Facing the sun and the wind   Of the hills and the sea.I saw them naked, superb,   Like the Greeks long ago,With shield and spear and arrow   Ready to strike and throw.I saw them as they were made   By the Christianizing crows,Blinking, stupid, clumsy   In their greasy ill-cut clothes:I heard their gibbering cant,   And they sung those hymns that smellOf poor souls besotted, degraded   With the fear of “God” and “hell.”And I thought if Jesus could see them,   He who loved the freedom, the light,And loathed those who compassed heaven   And earth for one proselyte,To make him, etcetera, etcetera, —   Then this sight, as on me or you,Would act on him like an emetic,   And he’d have to go off and spue.O Jesus, O man of the People,   Who died to abolish all this —The pharisee rank and respectable,   The scribe and the greedy priest —O Jesus, O sacred Socialist,   You would die again of shame,If you were alive and could see   What things are done in your name.A DEATH AT SEA(Coral Sea, Australia.)IDead in the sheep-pen he lies,   Wrapped in an old brown sail.The smiling blue sea and the skies   Know not sorrow nor wail.Dragged up out of the hold,   Dead on his last way home,Worn-out, wizened, a Chinee old, —   O he is safe – at home!   Staring upon you here.One of earth’s patient toilers at peace   I see, I revere!IIIn the warm cloudy night we go   From the motionless ship;Our lanterns feebly glow;   Our oars drop and drip.We land on the thin pale beach,   The coral isle’s round us;A glade of driven sand we reach;   Our burial ground’s found us.There we dig him a grave, jesting;   We know not his name.What heeds he who is resting, resting?   Would I were the same!Come away, it is over and done!   Peace and he shall not sever,By moonlight nor light of the sun,   For ever and ever!III“dirge.”“Sleep in the pure driven sand,   (No one will know)In the coral isle by the land   Where the blue tides come and go.  “Alive, thou wert poor, despised;Dead, thou canst haveWhat mightiest monarchs have prized,   An eternal grave!“Alone with the lovely isles,   With the lovely deep,Where the sea-winds sing and the sunlight smiles   Thou liest asleep!”

III

“AUSTRALIA: victoria – new south wales – queensland.”

THE OUTCASTS(Melbourne.)   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.There is worse than to be as we are —   Cast out, not of men but of God! VICTORIA TO JAMES MOORHOUSE, 17

Bishop of Melbourne, who left Melbourne for the Bishopric of Manchester, 10th March 1886.

He came, a stranger, and we gave him welcome   More as loved friend than rumour’s honoured guest.He spoke!  Were we, then, all so slack to listen?   To hail him as our wisest, noblest, best?          Why did he leave us?He toiled!  And we, we under such a leader,   Forgot all other creeds, but that he taught,And proud of our clear answer to his summons,   Forgot all other fights but that he fought!          Why did he leave us?He wearied!  ’Twas too great, he said, the burden.   We saw it and we cried with anxious love;“What does he (Let him back!) down in the battle?   Is not the general’s place at rest above?”          Why did he leave us?He left us for a “wider sphere of labour!”   A tinsel seat within a House that shakes,To herd with priests meal-mouthed, with lords and liars   That still would bind a nation’s chain that breaks!          Why did he leave us?Farewell, then!  Are there any to reproach you   In all this facile crowd that weeps and cheers?Not one!  But, ah you yet shall listen sadly   To an echo falling faint through the dead years: —          Why did he leave us?IN THE SEA-GARDENS(Sydney.)“the man of the nation.”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 seeA man with a slouch hat, smoking.   That is the man for me!That is the Man of the Nation;   He works and much endures.When all the rest is rotten,   He rises and cuts and cures.He’s the soldier of the Crimea,   Fighting to honour fools;He’s the grappler and strangler of Lee   Lord of the terrible tools.He’s in all the conquered nations   That have won their own at last,And in all that yet shall win it.   And the world by him goes past!O strong sly world, this nameless   Still, much-enduring Man,Is the hand of God that shall clutch you   For all you have done, or can!“UPSTARTS.”What? do you say that we, the toilers – the slaves —   (Why strain at the gnat nameWho swallow the camel thing your pocket craves?) —   That we are “just the same,”(Nay, worse) when power is ours and wealth – that we   Are harder masters still,More keen to ring her last from misery,   More greedy of our will?’Tis true!  And when you see men so – see us   Sneer at us, call us swine! —“How we must love you who have made us thus,   You may perhaps divine!”LABOUR – CAPITAL – LANDIn that rich archipelago of seaWith fiery hills, thick woods wherein the mias 18Browses along the trees, and god-like menLeave monuments of speech too large for us, 19There are strange forest-trees.  Far up, their rootsSpread from the central trunk, and settle downDeep in the life-fed earth, seventy feet below.In the past days here grew another tree,On whose high fork the parasitic seedFell and sprang up, and, finding life and strengthIn the disease, decrepitude and deathOf that it fed on, utterly consumed it,And stands the monument of Nature’s crime!So Labour with his parasites, the twoGreat swollen robbers, Land and Capital,Stands to the gaze of men but as a heapOf rotted dust whose only use must beTo rich the roots of the proud stem that killed it! 20AUSTRALIAI see a land of desperate droughts and floods:I see a land where need keeps spreading round,And all but giants perish in the stress:I see a land where more, and more, and moreThe demons, Earth and Wealth, grow bloat and strong.I see a land that lies a helpless preyTo wealthy cliques and gamblers and their slaves,The huckster politicians: a poor landThat less and less can make her heart-wish law.Yea, but I see a land where some few braveRaise clear eyes to the Struggle that must come,Reaching firm hands to draw the doubters in,Preaching the gospel: “Drill and drill and drill!”Yea, but I see a land where best of allThe hope of victory burns strong and bright!ART“Yes, let Art go, if it must be   That with it men must starve —If Music, Painting, Poetry   Spring from the wasted hearth!”Yes, let Art go, till once again   Through fearless heads and handsThe toil of millions and the pain   Be passed from out the lands:Till from the few their plunder falls   To those who’ve toiled and earnedBut misery’s hopeless intervals   From those who’ve robbed and spurned.Yes, let Art go, without a fear,   Like autumn flowers we burn,For, with her reawakening year,   Be sure she will return! —Return, but greater, nobler yet   Because her laurel crownWith dew and not with blood is wet,   And as our queen sit down!“HENRY GEORGE.”(Melbourne.)I came to buy a book.  It was a shopDown in a narrow quiet street, and hereThey kept, I knew, these socialistic books.I entered.  All was bare, but clean and neat.The shelves were ranged with unsold wares; the counterHeld a few sheets and papers.  Here and thereHung prints and calendars.  I rapped, and straightA young girl came out through the inner door.She had a clear and simple face; I sawShe had no beauty, loveliness, nor charm,But, as your eyes met those grey light-lit eyesLike to a mountain spring so pure, you thought:“He’d be a clever man who looked, and lied!”I asked her for the book…  We spoke a little..Her words were as her face was, as her eyes.Yes, she’d read many books like this of mine:Also some poets, Shelley, Byron too,And Tennyson, but ‘poets only dreamed!’Thus, then, we talked, until by chance I spokeA phrase and then a name.  ’Twas “Henry George.”Her face lit up.  O it was beautiful,Or never woman’s face was!  “Henry George?”She said.  And then a look, a flush, a smile,Such as sprung up in Magdalenè’s cheekWhen some voice uttered Jesus, made her angel.She turned and pointed up the counter.  I,Loosing mine eyes from that ensainted face,Looked also.  ’Twas a print, a common print,The head and shoulders of some man.  She said,Quite in a whisper: “That’s him, Henry George!”Darling, that in this life of wrong and woe,The lovely woman-soul within you broodedAnd wept and loved and hated and pitied,And knew not what its helplessness could do,Its helplessness, its sheer bewilderment —That then those eyes should fall, those angel eyes,On one who’d brooded, wept, loved, hated, pitied,Even as you had, but therefrom had sprungA hope, a plan, a scheme to right this wrong,And make this woe less hateful to the sun —And that pure soul had found its Master thusTo listen to, remember, watch and love,And trust the dawn that rose up through the dark:O this was goodFor me to see, as for some weary hopelessLonger and toiler for “the Kingdom of Heaven”To stand some lifeless twilight hour, and hear,There in the dim-lit house of Lazarus,Mary who said: “Thus, thus, he looked, he spake,The Master!” – So to hear her rapturous words,And gaze upon her up-raised heavenly face!WILLIAM WALLACE(For the Ballarat statue of him.)This is Scotch William Wallace.  It was heWho in dark hours first raised his face to see:   Who watched the English tyrant nobles spurn,Steel-clad, with iron hoofs the Scottish free:   Who armed and drilled the simple footman Kern,   Yea, bade in blood and rout the proud Knight learnHis Feudalism was dead, and Scotland stand   Dauntless to wait the day of Bannockburn!O Wallace, peerless lover of thy land,We need thee still, thy moulding brain and hand!   For us, thy poor, again proud tyrants spurn,The robber rich, a yet more hateful band!THE AUSTRALIAN FLAGPure blue flag of heaven   With your silver stars,Not beside those crosses’   Blood-stained torture-bars:Not beside the token   The foul sea-harlot gave,Pure blue flag of heaven,   Must you ever wave!No, but young exultant,   Free from care and crime,The soulless selfish England   Of this later time:No, but, faithful, noble,   Rising from her grave,Flag of light and liberty,   For ever must you wave!TO AN OLD FRIEND IN ENGLAND“esau.”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,   O my friend, O my love!Was it for nothing in the dear dead years,   O my love, O my friend,I kissed you when you wrung my heart from me,And gave my stubborn hand where trust might be?Yet then I smiled, and see, these bitter tears,   O my friend, O my love!No bitter words to say to you have I,   O my love, O my friend!That faith, that hope, that love was mine, not yours!And yet that kiss, that clasp endures, endures.I have no bitter words to say.  Good-bye,   O my friend, O my love! AT THE SEAMEN’S UNION. 21 “the seamen and the miners.”.. One rises now and speaks: “The Cause is one —   Labour o’er all the earth!  Shan’t we, then, shareWith these, whose very flesh and blood’s our own,   All that we can of what we have and are?“What is it that their work is in the earth,   Down in its depths, and ours is on the sea?The fight they fight is ours; their worth our worth;   Their loss our loss.  We help them!  They are we!“We help them! – Ay, and when our hour too breaks,   And on to every ship that ploughs the waveWe put our hand at last, our hand that takes   Its own, will they forget the help we gave?“And, if our robber lords would rob us still   With the foul hoard of beasts without a soul,They may find leprous hands to work their will,   But, for their ships, where will they find the coal?”“Help them!” the voices cry.  They help them.  Here,   Resolute, stern, menacing, hark the sound!Look, ’tis the simple fearlessness of fear —   Dark faces and deep voices all around.TO HIS LOVE“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,   A daughter true like you:“A son to battle the wrong,   To seek and strive for the right;A beautiful daughter of song,   To point us on to the light!”HER POEM:“my baby girl, that was born and died on the same day.”“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   Throughout the coming changeful years;No desperate weird to dree and dread;   No bitter lonely tears!“No woman’s piercing crown of thorns   Will press my aching baby’s brow;No starless nights, no sunless morns,   Will ever greet her now.“The clothes that I had wrought with care   Through weary hours for love’s sweet sakeAre laid aside, and with them there   A heart that seemed to break.”TO HENRY GEORGE IN AMERICANot 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 nightOne with the patience day must see and hear —Not for the shafts the lying foemen fear,   Shot from the soul’s intense self-centring light —   But for the heart of love divine and bright,We praise you, worker, thinker, poet, seer!Man of the People, – faithful in all parts,   The veins’ last drop, the brain’s last flickering dole,   You on whose forehead beams the aureoleThat hope and “certain hope” alone imparts —   Us have you given your perfect heart and soul;Wherefore receive as yours our souls and hearts!“ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.”Shrieks out of smoke, a flame of dung-straw fire   That is not quenched but hath for only fruit   What writhes and dies not in its rotten root:Two things made flesh, the visible desireTo match in filth the skunk, the ape in ire, 22   Mouthing before the mirrors with wild foot   Beyond all feebler footprint of pursuit,The perfect twanger of the Chinese lyre!A heart with generous virtues run to seedIn vices making all a jumbled creed:   A soul that knows not love nor trust nor shame,But cuts itself with knives to bawl and bleed —   If thou we’ve known of late, art still the same,   What need, O soul, to sign thee with thy name?Once on thy lips the golden-honeyed bees   Settling made sweet the heart that was not strong,   And sky and earth and sea burst into song: 23Once on thine eyes the light of agoniesFlashed through the soul and robbed the days of ease. 24   But tunes turn stale when love turns babe, and long   The exiled gentlemen grow fat with wrong.And peasants, workmen, beggars, what are these?  25O you who sang the Italian smoke above, —   Mud-lark of Freedom, pipe of that vile bandWhose envy slays the tyrant, not the loveOf these poor souls none have the keeping of —   It is your hand – it is your pandar hand   Smites the bruised mouth of pilloried Ireland!TO AN UNIONIST“If you only knewHow gladly I’ve given itAll these years —The light of mine eyes,The heat of my lips,Mine agonies,My yearning tears,My blood that drips,My brain that sears:If you only knewHow gladly I’ve given itAll these years —My hope and my youth,My manhood, my Art,My passion, my truth,My mind and my heart:“O my brother, you would not say,   What have you to do with me?You would not, would not turn away   Doubtingly and bitterly.“If you only knewHow little I cared forThese other things —The delicate speech,The high demandOf each from each,The imaginingsOf Love’s Holy Land:If you only knewHow little I cared forThese other things —The wide clear viewOver peoples and times,The search in the newEntrancing climes,Science’s wingsAnd Art’s sweet chimes:“O my brother, if you only knewWhat to me in these things is understood,As it seems to me it would seem to you,What was good for the Cause was surely good:“O my brother, you would not say:   What have you to do with me?You would not, would not turn away   Doubtingly and bitterly:“But you would take my hand with your hand,   O my brother, if you only knew;You would smile at me, you would understand,   You would call me brother as I call you!”TO MY FRIEND SYDNEY JEPHCOTT,with a copy of my “poetical works.”“Take with all my heart, friend, this,   The labour of my past,Though the heart here hidden isAnd the soul’s eternities   Hold the present fast.“Take it, still, with soul and heart,   Pledge of that dear dayWhen the shadows stir and start,By the bright Sun burst apart —   Young Australia!” TO E. L. ZOX. 26 (Melbourne.)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 sunTo these, the nameless crowd that drags on slowThe common toil, the common weary woe   The world cares nought for.  But your work securesThro’ union strength and self-respect that grow.There is a courage that unflawed enduresThe sneer, the slander of earth’s epicures.   And here are grateful women’s hearts to showThis kindness and this courage, both are yours!“FATHER ABE.”(Song of the American Sons of Labour.)THE SONG“O we knew so well, dear Father,   When we answered to your call,And the Southern Moloch stricken   Shook and tottered to his fall —“O we knew so well you loved us,   And our hearts beat back to yoursWith the rapturous adoration   That through all the years endures!“Mothers, sisters bade us hasten   Sweethearts, wives with babe at breast;For the Union, faith and freedom,   For our hero of the West!“And we wrung forth victory blood-stained   From the desperate hands of Crime,And our Cause blazed out Man’s beacon   Through the endless future time!“And forgiven, forever we bade it   Cease, that envy, hatred, strife,As he willed, our murdered Father   That had sealed his love with life!“O dear Father, was it thus, then?   Did we this but in a dream?Is it real, hideous present?   Does our suffering only seem?“Bend and listen, look and tell us!   Are these joyless toilers We?Slaves more wretched, patient, piteous   Than the slaves we fought to free!“Are these weak, worn girls and women   Those whose mothers yet can tellHow they kissed and clasped men god-like   With fierce faces fronting hell?“Bend and listen, look and tell us!   Is this silent waste, possessedBy bloat thieves and their task-masters,   Thy free, thy fair, thy fearless West?“Are these Eastern mobs of wage-slaves,   Are these cringing debauchees,Sons of those who slung their rifles —   Shook the old Flag to the breeze?”THE ANSWER“Men and boys, O fathers, brothers,   Burst these fetters round you bound!Women, sisters, wives and mothers,   Lift your faces from the ground!“O Democracy, O People,   East and West and North and South,Rise together, one for ever,   Strike this Crime upon the mouth!“Bid them not, the men who loved you,   Those who fought for you and died,Scorn you that you broke a small Crime,   Left a great Crime pass in pride!“England, France, the played-out countries,   Let them reek there in their stew,Let their past rot out their present,   But the Future is with you!“O America, O first-born   Of the age that yet shall beWhere all men shall be as one man,   Noble, faithful, fearless, free! —“O America, O paramour   Of the foul slave-owner Pelf,You who saved from slavery others,   Now from slavery save yourself!“Save yourself, though, anguish-shaken,   You cry out and bow your head,Crying ‘Why am I forsaken?’   Crying ‘It is finishèd!’“Save yourself, no God will save you;   Not one angel can He give!They and He are dead and vanished,   And ’tis you, ’tis you must live!“Risen again, fire-tried, victorious,   From the grave of Crime down-hurled,Peerless, pure, serene and glorious,   Wield the sceptre of the world!”A FOOL(Brisbane)He asked me of my friend – “a clever man;Such various talent, business, journalism;A pen that might some day have sent out ‘leaders’From our greatest newspapers.” – “Yes, all this,All this,” I said. – “And yet he will not rise?He’ll stay a “comp.,” a printer all his life?” —I said: “Just that, a workman all his life.”But, as my questioner was a business man,One of the sons of Capital, a sageWhose practicality saw I can supposeQuite to his nose-tip even his finger-ends,I vouchsafed explanation.  “This young manMy friend, was born and bred a workman.  AllHis heart and soul (And men have hearts and soulsOther than those the doctor proses of,The parson prates of, and both make their trade)Were centred in his comradeship and love.His friends, his ‘chums’, were workmen, and the girlHe wooed, and made a happy wife and mother,Had heart and soul like him in whence she sprung.Observe now!  When he came to think and read,He saw (it seemed to him he saw) in whatCapitalists, Employers, men like you,Think and call ‘justice’ in your inter-dealings,Some slight mistakes (I fancy he’d say ‘wrongs’)Whereby his order suffered.  So he wonders:‘Cannot we change this?’  And he tries and tries,Knowing his fellows and adapting allHis effort in the channels that they know.You understand?  He’s ‘only an Unionist!’Now for the second point.  This man believesThat these mistakes – these wrongs (we’ll pass the word)Spring from a certain thing called ‘competition’Which you (and I) know is a God-given thingWhereby the fittest get up to the top(That’s I – or you) and tread down all the others.Well, this man sees how by this God-given thingHe has the chance to use his extra witsAnd clamber up: he sees how others have —(Like you – or me; my father’s father’s fatherWas a market-gardener and, I trust, a good one).He sees, moreover, how perpetuallyEach of his fellows who has extra witsHas used them as the fox fallen in the wellUsed the confiding goat, and how the goatsMore and more wallow there and stupefy,Robbed of the little wit the hapless crowdHad in their general haplessness.  Well, thenThis man of mine (This is against all law,Human, divine and natural, I admit)Prefers to wallow there and not get out,Except they all can!  I’ve made quite a taleAbout what is quite simple.  Yet ’tis curious,As I see you hold.  Now frankly tell me, will you,What do you think of him?” – “He is a fool!” —“He is a fool?  There is no doubt of it!But I am told that it was some such foolCame once from Galilee, and ended onA criminal’s cross outside Jerusalem, —And that this fool, he and his criminal’s cross,Broke up an Empire that seemed adamant,And made a new world which, renewed again,Is Europe still.He is a fool!  And it was some such foolDrudged up and down the earth these later years,And wrote a Book the other fools bought upIn tens of thousands, calling it a Gospel.And this fool too, and the fools that follow him,Or hold with him, why, he and they shall allEnd in the mad-house, or the gutter, whereThey’ll chew the husk of their mad dreams, and die!For what are their follies but dreams?  They have done nothing,And never will!.One moment!  I have just a word to say.How comes it, tell me, friend, six weeks agoA ‘comp.’ was sent a-packing for a causeHis fellows thought unjust, and that same night(Or, rather, the next morning) in comes oneTo tell you (quite politely) that unlessThat ‘comp.’ was setting at his frame, they fearedOne of our greatest newspapers would not goThat day a harbinger of light and leadingTo gladden and instruct its thousands?  And,If I remember right, it did – and so did he,That wretched ‘comp.,’ set at his frame, and does!How came it also that three months agoYour brother, the shipowner, “sacked” a manOut of his ship, and bade him go to hell?And in the evening up came two or three,Discreetly asking him to state the cause?And when he said he’d see them with the other,(Videlicet, in hell), they said they feared,Unless the other came thence (if he was there),And was upon his ship to-morrow morning,It would not sail.  It did not sail till noon,And he sailed with it!But this is all beside the point!  Our ‘comp.,’Who sweats there, and who will not write you ‘leaders’Except to help a friend who’s fallen ill,Why, he, beyond a doubt he is a fool!” “MOUNT RENNIE.” 27 I(The Australian Press speaks)“Kill them!  Yes, hang them all!   They are fiends, just that!And we’re all agreed fiends should be sent   To a place that’s hot.“They were fiends, too, of themselves;   They delighted in it!It’s all their fault, their own fault!   Don’t listen a minute!“Don’t let anyone talk   About ‘fatality,’ ‘lot,’That sort of talk (excuse us!)   Is just damned rot.“You and I, p’raps, are what we’re made.   If I’m dying of phthisis,It’s because my father passed on   To me what the price is“Of his excesses, and I,   Overworked, come off worse.Just so; but, with these young fiends,   It’s quite the reverse.“Their homes were happy and bright,   (All are in Australia).Their parents were good, kind, wise:   No breath of failure“Can be breathed on their education,   Their childhood’s surroundings,The healthy training that gives   Youth morality’s groundings.“Those people who say   That the larrikins comeFrom that God-spat-out-thing,   The Australian ‘home’ —“The narrow harsh rule   Of base mean parents,Whose played-out ideas drive   All of good and of fair thence:“That our prostitute girls   Come from just the same Cause —Why, these idiots know nothing   Of facts, social laws!“Kill them, then!  Hang them all!   We (like God) must be just.It was all their own faults,   Not ours…  Dust to dust!”II(The Time-Spirit speaks.)“Poor lads!  And you for others’ wrongs and sinsWhose dead past greed and lust did never wince   To make your fathers, mothers, and now youMiserable fiends in hell, must expiate, since   “We the more guilty, we the strong, the few,   Whose triumph thrusts you down into the stew,Fear lest our victims rise and rend us, fear   This problem mad we will not listen to!“Victims, with her your fellow-victim here,Blind, deaf, dumb beasts, the hour shall yet appear   When men, when justicers resolute-terrible, youShall speak and all men tremble as they hear!”“TYRANNY.”(Melbourne.)

[The Delegates speak.]