From A Verandah
(Sydney)
'Armageddon'
O CITY lapped in sun and Sabbath rest,
With happy face of plenteous ease possessed,
Have you no doubts that whisper, dreams that moan
Disquietude, to stir your slumbering breast?
Think you the sins of other climes are gone?
The harlot's curse rings in your streets — the groan
Of out-worn men, the stabbed and plundered slaves
Of ever-growing Greed, these are your own!
O'er you shall sweep the fiery hell that craves
For quenchment the bright blood of human waves:
For you, if you repent not, shall atone
For Greed's dark death-holes with War's swarming graves!
poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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To The Emperor William I
YOU 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 of
The filthy sty whose latest litter cling
Round England's flesh-pots, gorged hogs gluttoning.
No, but on flaming battlefields, 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.
poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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To Japan
SIMPLE 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 start
To feverish life, feeling the poisonous smart
Upon your lips of harlot lips close-pressed,
The lips of Her who stands among the rest
With greasy righteous soul and rotten heart.
O sunrise land, O land of gentleness,
What madness drives you to lust's hateful 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!
poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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Her Poem
'My baby girl, that was born and died on the same day'
'WITH wild 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 sake
Are laid aside, and with them there
A heart that seemed to break.'
poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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Love and Death
Death? is it death you give? So be it! O Death,
thou hast been long my friend, and now thy pale
cool cheek shall have my kiss, while the faint breath
expires on thy still lips, O lovely Death!
Come then, loose hands, fair Life, without a wail!
We've had good hours together, and you were sweet
what time love whispered with the nightingale,
tho' ever your music by the lark's would fail.
Come then, loose hands! Our lover time is done.
Now is the marriage with the eternal sun.
The hours are few that rest, are few and fleet.
Good-bye! The game is lost: the game is won.
poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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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 hands
The 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 earned
But 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 crown
With dew and not with blood is wet,
And as our Queen sit down!
poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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Analogy
(To ——)
HAD you lived when a tyrant King
Strove to make all the slaves of one,
With Nobles and with Churchmen you
Had stood unflinching, pure and true,
To annihilate that hateful thing
Green Runnymede 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 Ironsides
The brave days had discovered you,
Where Naseby saw the Gallants run?
And yet you, — this same knight in list
For Freedom in her narrow dawn
Against that One, against those Few,
Vile King, vile Nobles — you, yet you
Stand by the bloody Capitalist,
Fight with the pander Gentleman!
poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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To Charles Parnell
ONE 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 shame
With 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!
poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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In The Pit
'Chant of the Firemen'
'THIS is the steamer's pit.
The ovens like dragons of fire
Glare thro' their close-lidded eyes
With restless hungry desire.
'Down from the tropic night
Rushes the funnelled air;
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,
[...] Read more
poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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To Karl Marx
NOT 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 night
One 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 aureole
That hope and 'certain hope' alone imparts —
Us have you given your perfect heart and soul;
Wherefore receive as yours our souls and hearts.
poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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