Where sin and shame and disease
And foul death comes;
‘Tis not when heart and brain
Would be still and forget
Men 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 breast
To wreck the great guilty Temple,
And give us rest!
Similar Posts
THRO’ the mists of years,
Your bloody sweat and tears,Your desperate hopes and fearsReach us once again,Brothers, who long ago,For life’s bitter sake,Toiled and suffered so,Robbery, insult, blow,Rope and sword and stake:Toiled and suffered, tillIt 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…
IN the black night, along the mud-deep roads,
Hark! sounds that gird the darknesses like goads,Murmurs and rumours and reverberant dreams,Trampling, breaths, movements, and a little light. —The marching of the Army of the Night!The stricken men, the mad brute-beasts are keepingNo more their places in the ditches or holes,But rise, and join us, and the women, weepingBeside the roadways, rise like demon-souls.Fill…
SHE went along the road,
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 it wail.She took a jagged stone;She wished it to be dead.She beat…
(Coral Sea, Australia)
DEAD in the sheep-pen he lies,Wrapped in an old brown sail.The smiling blue sea and the skiesKnow 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!Brother, I stand not as theseStaring upon you here.One of earth’s patient toilers at…
COME then, let us at least know what’s the truth.
We did not understand; old age or youthBenumbed our sense or stole our sight away.It is a lie — just that, a lie — to declareThat Wages are the worth of Work.No; they are what the Employer wills to spareTo let the Employee sheer starvation shirk.They’re the life-pittance Competition leaves,The least for which brother’ll slay…
GIRLS, we love you, and love
That 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 turnsTraitrous hands or forlornBack from the plough that burns,Give him pitiless scorn!Let him know that no wifeWould bear him a fearless childTo hate and loathe the lifeOf a…