"Men and boys, O fathers, brothers,
Burst these fetters round you bound!
Women, sisters, wives and mothers,
Lift your faces from the ground!
"O Democracy, O People,
East and West and North and South,
Rise together, one for ever,
Strike this Crime upon the mouth!
"Bid them not, the men who loved you,
Those who fought for you and died,
Scorn you that you broke a small Crime,
Left a great Crime pass in pride!
"England, France, the played-out countries,
Let them reek there in their stew,
Let their past rot out their present,
But the Future is with you!
"O America, O first-born
Of the age that yet shall be
Where all men shall be as one man,
Noble, faithful, fearless, free!--
"O America, O paramour
Of the foul slave-owner Pelf,
You who saved from slavery others,
Now from slavery save yourself!
"Save yourself, though, anguish-shaken,
You cry out and bow your head,
Crying 'Why am I forsaken?'
Crying 'It is finished!'
"Save yourself, no God will save you;
Not one angel can He give!
They and He are dead and vanished,
And 'tis you, 'tis you must live!
"Risen again, fire-tried, victorious,
From the grave of Crime down-hurled,
Peerless, pure, serene and glorious,
Wield the sceptre of the world!"
A FOOL.
(_Brisbane_).
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 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 hearts and souls
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 'chums', were workmen, and the girl
He wooed, and made a happy wife and mother,
Had heart and soul like him in whence she sprung.
Observe now! When he came to think and read,
He saw (it seemed to him he saw) in what
Capitalists, Employers, men like you,
Think and call 'justice' in your inter-dealings,
Some slight mistakes (I fancy _he'd_ say 'wrongs')
Whereby his order suffered. So he wonders:
'_Cannot we change this_?' And he tries and tries,
Knowing his fellows and adapting all
His effort in the channels that they know.
You understand? He's 'only an Unionist!'
Now for the second point. This man believes
That these mistakes--these wrongs (we'll pass the word)
Spring from a certain thing called 'competition'
Which you (and I) know is a God-given thing
Whereby the fittest get up to the top
(That's I--or you) and tread down all the others.
Well, this man sees how by this God-given thing
He has the chance to use his extra wits
And clamber up: he sees how others have--
(Like you--or me; my father's father's father
Was a market-gardener and, I trust, a good one).
He sees, moreover, how perpetually
Each of his fellows who has extra wits
Has used them as the fox fallen in the well
Used the confiding goat, and how the goats
More and more wallow there and stupefy,
Robbed of the little wit the hapless crowd
Had in their general haplessness. Well, then
This man of mine (This is against all law,
Human, divine and natural, I admit)
Prefers to wallow there and not get out,
Except they all can! I've made quite a tale
About what is quite simple. Yet 'tis curious,
As I see you hold. Now frankly tell me, will you,
What do you think of him?"--"_He is a fool_!"--
"He is a fool? There is no doubt of it!
But I am told that it was some such fool
Came once from Galilee, and ended on
A criminal's cross outside Jerusalem,--
And that this fool, he and his criminal's cross,
Broke up an Empire that seemed adamant,
And made a new world which, renewed again,
Is Europe still.
He is a fool! And it was some such fool
Drudged up and down the earth these later years,
And wrote a Book the other fools bought up
In tens of thousands, calling it a Gospel.
And this fool too, and the fools that follow him,
Or hold with him, why, he and they shall all
End in the mad-house, or the gutter, where
They'll chew the husk of their mad dreams, and die!
For what are their follies but dreams? They have _done_ nothing,
And never will! . . .
One moment! I have just a word to say.
How comes it, tell me, friend, six weeks ago
A 'comp.' was sent a-packing for a cause
His fellows thought unjust, and that same night
(Or, rather, the next morning) in comes one
To tell you (quite politely) that unless
That 'comp.' was setting at his frame, they feared
One of our greatest newspapers would not go
That day a harbinger of light and leading
To gladden and instruct its thousands? And,
If I remember right, it did--and so did he,
That wretched 'comp.,' set at his frame, and does!
How came it also that three months ago
Your brother, the shipowner, "sacked" a man
Out of his ship, and bade him go to hell?
And in the evening up came two or three,
Discreetly asking him to state the cause?
And when he said he'd see them with the other,
(Videlicet, in hell), they said they feared,
Unless the other came thence (if he was there),
And was upon his ship to-morrow morning,
It would not sail. It did not sail till noon,
And he sailed with it!
But this is all beside the point! Our 'comp.,'
Who sweats there, and who will not write you 'leaders'
Except to help a friend who's fallen ill,
Why, he, beyond a doubt he is a fool!"
"MOUNT RENNIE." {95}
I.
(_The Australian Press speaks_).
"Kill them! Yes, hang them all!
They are fiends, just that!
And we're all agreed fiends should be sent
To a place that's hot.
"They were fiends, too, of themselves;
They delighted in it!
It's all their fault, their own fault!
Don't listen a minute!
"Don't let anyone talk
About 'fatality,' 'lot,'
That sort of talk (excuse us!)
Is just damned rot.
"You and I, p'raps, are what we're made.
If I'm dying of phthisis,
It's because my father passed on
To me what the price is
"Of his excesses, and I,
Overworked, come off worse.
Just so; but, with these young fiends,
It's quite the reverse.
"Their homes were happy and bright,
(All _are_ in Australia).
Their parents were good, kind, wise:
No breath of failure
"Can be breathed on their education,
Their childhood's surroundings,
The healthy training that gives
Youth morality's groundings.
"Those people who say
That the larrikins come
From that God-spat-out-thing,
The Australian 'home'--
"The narrow harsh rule
Of base mean parents,
Whose played-out ideas drive
All of good and of fair thence:
"That our prostitute girls
Come from just the same Cause--
Why, these idiots know nothing
Of facts, social laws!
"Kill them, then! Hang them all!
We (like God) must be just.
It was all their own faults,
Not ours. . . . Dust to dust!"
II.
(_The Time-Spirit speaks_.)
"Poor lads! And you for others' wrongs and sins
Whose dead past greed and lust did never wince
To make your fathers, mothers, and now you
Miserable fiends in hell, must expiate, since
"We the more guilty, we the strong, the few,
Whose triumph thrusts you down into the stew,
Fear lest our victims rise and rend us, fear
This problem mad we will not listen to!
"Victims, with her your fellow-victim here,
Blind, deaf, dumb beasts, the hour shall yet appear
When men, when justicers resolute-terrible, you
Shall speak and all men tremble as they hear!"
"TYRANNY."
(_Melbourne_.)
[_The Delegates speak_.]
"'Tyranny'? Yes, that's it!
We are not afraid
To face the word that's fit
For what we've said!
"It's the tyranny of the Many,
That will not allow
There's the right to any
To seek wealth and power now
"At the expense of the Many.
Say, that one or this
Works 'over hours': then he
Drives us all to the abyss,
"Where, struggling together
One rises again
While the rest all together
Are stifled and slain.
"From this death-strife of brothers
Comes the tyranny of One.
That's _your_ sort. But we others,
_We prefer our own_!"
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!
"ELSIE:"
A MEMORY.
Little elfin maid,
Old, though scarce two years,
With your big dark hazel eyes
Tenderer than tears,
And your rosebud mouth
Lisping jocund things,
Breaking brooding silence with
Wistful questionings!
Like a flower you grew
While life's bright sun shone.
Does the greedy spendthrift earth
Heed a flower is gone?
No; but Love's fond ken,
That gropes through Death's strange ways,
Almost seems to hear your Voice,
Seems to see your Face!
"NATIONALISM AND M'ILWRAITH!"
THE QUEENSLAND ELECTIONS CRY, 1888.
Australia listened! Through the brawling game
Of played-out rascals gambling for her gold,
The rotten-hearted traitors who had sold
For flimsy English gauds her righteous fame--
Through the foul hubbub, it did seem, there came
The still small voice of nobler things untold.
But now, but now with wonder manifold
She hears a voice that calls her by her name!
Australia listens, as the mother wilt
To hear her first-born cry. "Say, is it death,
Or life and all life's hope made audible
That thrills my heart and gives my spirit faith?"
From out the gathering war-hosts leaps forth shrill
The double cry, "_Australia_, _M'Ilwraith_!"
The dawn is breaking northward! Rise, O Sun,
Australian Liberty, and give us light!
And thou who through the dark and doubtful night
With great clear eyes of patience looking on
Even to that splendid hour REPUBLICAN,
O know what things are with thee in the fight--
What hope and trust, what truth, what right, what might
To never leave this work till it be done!
Not as these others were, the helpless slaves
Of each diurnal need and cringing debt,
Australia's statesman, have we known thee yet!--
The world's great heroes call from a thousand graves:
"_Thy land_, _a nation_, _cries to thee to be set_
_Free as the freedom of her ocean waves_!"