Leaving the dun river with hurried tapping feet
And up the long uncomfortable street
With eyes uninterested yet forced to see and read
The dingy notices once sharp and bright with greed,
Now drear with want, that swear the Queen's Hotel
And Brown's Hotel and King's are doing well--
A soldier and a beggar mock me as I go,
The light steals after me, emerging slow
And pale from the dim alleys shadow-crouched.
I hurried by the drunkard as he slouched
From lamp-post unto lamp-post.... Then I saw
Caught in the mirror of a tailor's door
My own reflection as I hurried past,
My flaring colours and my face aghast--
The scarlet tassel of my hat that hung
Limp as a spent flame, and my skirt that clung
About my knees and fluttered at the back:
An injured moth, with sulphur stripes and black,
My bag flamboyant as a pillar-box;
My frayed gilt fringe of hair and tarnished locks.
Jagged and crude and swift I seemed to pass
Painted too brightly on that temperate glass.
... An omnibus from sudden corner reels:
Silence lies mangled underneath the wheels.
1915
O flattery, imposture, battle show,
What banners have you woven from the parted raiment,
What crimes from Calvary, what endless flow
Of blood from blood, revenge, exacted payment!
How have you turned the simple truth to lies
Made capital from creeds and missed their beauty,
Exalted vainly with self-pitying sighs
The wrongs enacted in the name of duty.
And ever quoting God for your excuse,
Bribing divinity to cloak your shame,
You train the spirit for material use,
You sacrifice men's hearts to feed your flame.
When shall the world be rid of these bald priests,
Pig-snouted with their gilded wolfish ears,
The scarlet cardinals of drunken feasts
Whose hands are washed in blood, whose feet in tears?
1916
What will happen to the beggar, and the sinner, and the sad,
And the drunk that drinks for sorrow, and the maimed, and mad;
What will happen to the starving, and the rebel run from drilling,
Cowardly, afraid of fighting, and the child who stole a shilling?
They shall go to prison black
With a striped shirt on the back,
Feast on bread and water there
In a cell, without a care.
They shall learn at least their duty,
Never tempted more of beauty--
They shall walk in rows and praise the Lord,
And one or two shall hang upon a cord--
And two or three shall die of grief alone--
(And this is well, for sinners should atone,)
And five or six shall curse the God that made them,
(And this is wicked, for the priests forbade them,)
And those that grew from dust shall go to dust
Downtrodden. Saith the preacher:--"God is just."
1917
If I were what I would be, and could break
The buttressed fortress of stupidity
Where laws are sentinels, and lies the masonry,
Surrounded with inertia, weedy lake,
Where centuries of mud lie curdled, and the fake
Grandeur of cardboard turrets, solemn puppetry--
The gods are blinking at us sleepily,
Tired of our games, the muddles that we make,
The bloodshed, idol worshipping, the chess
Of king, queen, castle, bishop, knight and pawn--
The rigid squares of black and white, they dress
With their perpetual challenge--faded, worn,
Are all the creeds and praises you profess
To weary gods that stretch themselves and yawn.
1917