Henry George
(Melbourne)
I CAME to buy a book. It was a shop
Down in a narrow quiet street, and here
They kept, I knew, these socialistic books.
I entered. All was bare, but clean and neat.
The shelves were ranged with unsold wares; the counter
Held a few sheets and papers. Here and there
Hung prints and calendars. I rapped, and straight
A young Girl came out through the inner door.
She had a clear and simple face; I saw
She had no beauty, loveliness, nor charm,
But, as your eyes met those grey light-lit eyes
Like 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!'
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poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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To England
I
THERE 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!
II
We hate You — not because of cruel deeds
Staining a glorious effort. They who live
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poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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A Glimpse Of China
I
In 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 down
From the fleets of junks and sampans
And the ancient Chinese Town!
II
In a Chair
(Foo-cbow)
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 drops
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poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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Epode
BEYOND the Night, down o'er the labouring East,
I see light's harbinger of day released:
Upon the false gleam of the ante-dawn,
Lo, the fair heaven of sun-pursuing morn.
Beyond the lampless sleep and perishing death,
That hold my heart, I feel my New Life's breath, —
I see the face my Spirit-shape shall have
When this frail clay and dust have fled the grave.
Beyond the Night, the death of doubt, defeat,
Rise dawn and morn, and life with light doth meet,
For the great cause, too, — sure as the Sun, you ray
Shoots up to strike the threatening clouds and say:
I come, and with me comes the victorious Day!
When I was young, the Muse I worshipped took me,
Fearless, a lonely heart, to look on men.
''Tis yours,' said she, 'to paint this show of them
Even as they are.' Then smiling she forsook me.
Wherefore with passionate patience I withdrew,
With eyes from which all loves, hates, hopes and fears,
Joy's aureole and the blinding sheen of tears,
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poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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A Story
(For the Irish Delegates in Australia)
DO you want to hear a story,
With a nobler praise than 'glory,'
Of a man who loved the right like heaven and loathed the wrong like
hell?
Then, that story let me tell you
Once again, though it as well you
Know as I — the splendid story of the man they call Parnell!
By the wayside of the nations,
Lashed with whips and execrations,
Helpless, hopeless, bleeding, dying, she, the Maiden Nation, lay;
And the burthen of dishonour
Weighed so grievously upon her
That her very children hid their eyes and crept in shame away.
And there as she was lying
Helpless, hopeless, bleeding, dying,
All her high-born foes came round her, fleering, jeering, as they said:
'What is freedom fought and won for?
She is down! She's dead and done for!'
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poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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England In Egypt
FROM the dusty jaded sunlight of the careless Cairo streets,
Through the open bedroom window where the pale blue held the
palms,
There came a sound of music, thrilling cries and rattling beats,
That startled me from slumber with a shock of sweet alarms
For beneath this rainless heaven with this music in my ears
I was born, and all my boyhood with its joy was glorified,
And for me the ranging Red-coats hold a passion of bright tears,
And the glancing of the bayonets lights a hell of savage pride.
So I leaped and ran, and looked,
And I stood, and listened there,
Till I heard the fifes and drums,
Till I heard the fifes and drums,
The fifes and drums of England
Thrilling all the alien air! —
And 'England, England, England,'
I heard the wild fifes cry,
'We are here to rob for England,
And to throttle liberty!'
And 'England, England, England,'
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poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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Fling Out The Flag
(For the Australian Labour Federation)
FLING out the Flag! Let her flap and rise in the rush of the eager air,
With the ring of the wild swan's wings as she soars from the swamp and
her reedy lair.
Fling out the Flag! And let friend and foe behold, for gain or loss,
The sign of our faith and the fight we fight, the Stars of the Southern
Cross!
Oh! Blue's for the sky that is fair for all, whoever, wherever he be,
And Silver's the light that shines on all for hope and for liberty,
And that's the desire that burns in our hearts, for ever quenchless and
bright,
And that's the sign of our flawless faith and the glorious fight we fight!
What is the wealthiest land on earth, if the millions suffer and cry,
And all but the happy selfish Few would fain curse God and die?
What are the glorious Arts, as they sit and sing on their jewelled thrones,
If their hands are wet with blood and their feet befouled with festering
bones?
What are the splendid Sciences, driving Nature with a bit of steel,
If only the Rich can mount the car and the Poor are dragged at the
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poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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To Queen Victoria In England
An Address on her Jubilee Year
MADAM, you have done well! Let others with praise unholy,
Speech addressed to a woman who never breathed upon earth,
Daub you over with lies or deafen your ears with folly,
I will praise you alone for your actual imminent worth.
Madam, you have done well! Fifty years unforgotten
Pass since we saw you first, a maiden simple and pure.
Now when every robber Landlord, Capitalist rotten,
Hated oppressors, praise you — Madam, we are quite sure!
Never once as a foe, open foe, to the popular power,
As nobler kings and queens, have you faced us, fearless and bold:
No, but in backstairs fashion, in the stealthy twilight hour,
You have struggled and struck and stabbed, you have bartered and
bought and sold!
Melbourne, the listless liar, the gentleman blood-beslavered,
Disraeli, the faithless priest of a cynical faith outworn —
These were dear to your heart, these were the men you favoured,
Those whom the People loved were fooled and flouted and torn!
Never in one true cause, for your people's sake and the light's sake,
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poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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A Fool
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 sage
Whose Practicality saw (I can suppose)
Quite to his nose-tip or even his finger-ends,
I vouchsafed explanation. 'This young man,
My friend, was born and bred a workman. All
His heart and soul (and men have souls and hearts
Other 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 ‘mates’ were workmen, and the girl
He wooed, and made a happy wife and mother,
Had heart and soul like him in whence she sprung.
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poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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At The West India Docks
(A Memory of August, 1883)
I STOOD in the ghastly gleaming night by the swollen, sullen flow
Of the dreadful river that rolls her tides through the City of Wealth and
Woe;
And mine eyes were heavy with sleepless hours, and dry with desperate
grief,
And my brain was throbbing and aching, and mine anguish had no relief.
For never a moment — no; not one — through all the dreary day,
And thro' all the weary night forlorn, would the pitiless pulses stay
Of the thundering great Machinery that such insistence had,
As it crushed out human hearts and souls, that it slowly drove me mad.
And there, in the dank and foetid mist, as I, silent and tearless, stood,
And the river's exhalations, sweating forth their muddy blood,
Breathed full on my face and poisoned me, like the slow, putrescent
drain
That carries away from the shambles the refuse of flesh and brain —
There rose up slowly before me, in the dome of the city's light,
A vast and shadowy Substance, with shafts and wheels of might,
Tremendous, ruthless, fatal; and I knew the visible shape
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poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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