"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!
"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!'
Thus, then, we talked, until by chance I spoke
A phrase and then a name. 'Twas "Henry George."
Her face lit up. O it was beautiful,
Or never woman's face was! "Henry George?"
She said. And then a look, a flush, a smile,
Such as sprung up in Magdalene's cheek
When some voice uttered Jesus, made her angel.
She turned and pointed up the counter. I,
Loosing mine eyes from that ensainted face,
Looked also. 'Twas a print, a common print,
The head and shoulders of some man. She said,
Quite in a whisper: "_That's him_, _Henry George_!"
Darling, that in this life of wrong and woe,
The lovely woman-soul within you brooded
And wept and loved and hated and pitied,
And knew not what its helplessness could do,
Its helplessness, its sheer bewilderment--
That then those eyes should fall, those angel eyes,
On one who'd brooded, wept, loved, hated, pitied,
Even as you had, but therefrom had sprung
A hope, a plan, a scheme to right this wrong,
And make this woe less hateful to the sun--
And that pure soul had found its Master thus
To listen to, remember, watch and love,
And trust the dawn that rose up through the dark:
O this was good
For me to see, as for some weary hopeless
Longer and toiler for "the Kingdom of Heaven"
To stand some lifeless twilight hour, and hear,
There in the dim-lit house of Lazarus,
Mary who said: "Thus, thus, he looked, he spake,
The Master!"--So to hear her rapturous words,
And gaze upon her up-raised heavenly face!
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!