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 the 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!
"WHY!"
"_Why is it we toil so_?
_Where go all the gains_?
_What do we produce for it_,
_All our pangs and pains_?"
Why it is we toil so,
Is it because, like sheep,
Since our fathers sought the shears,
We the same course keep.
Where go all the gains? Well,
It must be confessed,
First the landlords take the rent,
And the masters take the rest.
What do we produce for it?
Gentlemen!--and then
Imitation snobs who'd be
Like the gentlemen!
"_What_, _is it for such as these_
_That we suffer thus_?
_Fuddle-brained and vicious fools_,
_Vermin venomous_?
"_What_, _is that why on the top_
_Creeps that Royal Louse_,
_The prince of pheasants and cigars_,
_Of ballet-girls and grouse_?"
Yes, that's why, my Christian friends,
They slave and slaughter us.
England is made a dunghill that
Some bugs may breed and buzz.
A VISITOR IN THE CAMP.
To MARY ROBINSON. {27}
"_What_, _are you lost_, _my pretty little lady_?
_This is no place for such sweet things as you_.
_Our bodies_, _rank with sweat_, _will make you sicken_,
_And_, _you'll observe_, _our lives are rank lives too_."
"Oh no, I am not lost! Oh no, I've come here
(And I have brought my lute, see, in my hand),
To see you, and to sing of all you suffer
To the great world, and make it understand!"
"_Well_, _say_! _If one of those who'd robbed you thousands_,
_Dropped you a sixpence in the gutter where_
_You lay and rotted_, _would you call her angel_,
_For all her charming smile and dainty air_?"
"Oh no, I come not thus! Oh no, I've come here
With heart indignant, pity like a flame,
To try and help you!"--"_Pretty little lady_,
_It will be best you go back whence you came_."
"'_Enthusiasms_' _we have such little time for_!
_In our rude camp we drill the whole day long_.
_When we return from out the serried battle_,
_Come_, _and we'll listen to your pretty song_!"
"LORD LEITRIM."
My Lord, at last you have it! Now we know
Truth's not a phrase, justice an idle show.
Your life ran red with murder, green with lust.
Blood has washed blood clean, and, in the final dust
Your carrion will be purified. Yet, see,
Though your body perish, for your soul shall be
An immortality of infamy!
"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!
BELGRAVIA BY NIGHT.
"MOVE ON!"
"The foxes have holes,
And the birds of the air have nests,
But where shall the heads of the sons of men
Be laid, be laid?"
"_Where the cold corpse rests_,
_Where the sightless moles_
_Burrow and yet cannot make it afraid_,
_Rout but cannot wake it again_,
_There shall the heads of the sons of men_
_Be laid_, _laid_!"