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 dreadful bed?
O thrice accursed 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!
DAI BUTSU. {70}
(_Kama Kura_.)
He sits. Upon the kingly head doth rest
The round-balled wimple, and the heavy rings
Touch on the shoulders where the shadow clings.
The downward garment shows the ambiguous breast;
The face--that face one scarce can look on lest
One learn the secret of unspeakable things;
But the dread gaze descends with shudderings,
To the veiled couched knees, the hands and thumbs close-pressed.
O lidded, downcast eyes that bear the weight
Of all our woes and terrible wrong's increase:
Proud nostrils, lips proud-perfecter than these,
With what a soul within you do you wait!
Disdain and pity, love late-born of hate,
Passion eternal, patience, pain and peace!
"ENGLAND."
Where'er I go in this dense East,
In sunshine or shade,
I retch at the villainous feast
That England has made.
And my shame cannot understand,
As scorn springs elate,
How I ever loved that land
That now I hate!
THE FISHERMAN.
(_Mindanao_, _Philippines_.)
In the dark waveless sea,
Deep blue under deep blue,
The fisher drifts by on the tide
In his small pole-balanced canoe.
Above him the cloud-clapped hills
Crown the dense jungly sweeps;
The cocoa-nut groves hedge round
The hut where the beach-wave sleeps.
Is it not better so
To be as this savage is,
Than to live the wage-slave's life
Of hopeless agonies?