To His Love
(With his first book of 'Songs')
'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 hear
Your 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 feet
Trod through these bitter brakes of hell.
Take it, my Child, my Sweet!'
poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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Elsie
A Memory
LITTLE elfin maid,
Old, though scarce two years,
With your big dark hazel eyes
Tenderer than tears,
And your rosebud mouth
Lisping jocund things,
Breaking brooding silence with
Wistful questionings!
Like a flower you grew
While life's bright sun shone.
Does the greedy spendthrift earth
Heed a flower is gone?
No; but Love's fond ken,
That gropes through Death's dark ways,
Almost seems to hear your Voice,
Seems to see your Face!
poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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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 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!
poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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Parallels For The Pious
'HE holds a pistol to my head,
Swearing 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 sneering pittance of his hour,
The robber!'
'He shakes his serpent tongue that lies,
Wins trust for poisoned sophistries,
And stabs me in the dark, and flies,
The assassin!'
'He pits me in the dreadful fight
Against my fellow. Then he quite
Strips both his victims in the night,
The assassin!'
poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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Song Of The Dispossessed
'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 touch;
Bid 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!'
poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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Hagar
SHE went along the road,
Her baby in her arms,
The night and its alarms
Made 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 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!
poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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To The Girls Of The Unions
GIRLS, we love you, and love
Asks you to give again
That which draws it above,
Beautiful, without stain.
Give us weariless faith
In our Cause pure, passionate,
Dearer than life and death,
Dear as the love that's it!
Give to the man who turns
Traitrous hands or forlorn
Back from the plough that burns,
Give him pitiless scorn!
Let him know that no wife
Would bear him a fearless child
To hate and loathe the life
Of a leprous father defiled.
Girls, we love you, and love
Asks you to give again
That which draws it above,
Beautiful, without stain!
poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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Ireland
O WE have loved you through cold and rain
And pitiless frost,
Consuming our offering of blood and brain
Gladly 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!
poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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William Wallace
(For the Ballarat statue of him)
THIS is Scotch William Wallace. It was He
Who 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 learn
His 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!
poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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Dirge
(Brisbane)
'A little Soldier of the Army of the Night'
BURY him without a word!
No appeal to death;
Only the call of the bird
And the blind spring's breath.
Nature slays ten, yet the one
Reaches but to a part
Of what's to be done, to be sung.
Keep we a proud heart!
Let us not glose her waste
With lies and dreams;
Fawn on her wanton haste,
Say it but seems.
Comrades, with faces unstirred,
Scorning grief's dole,
Though with him, with him lies interred
Our heart and soul,
Bury him without a word!
[...] Read more
poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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