New Guinea
I SAW them as they were born,
Erect and fearless and free,
Facing the sun and the wind
Of the hills and the sea.
I saw them naked, superb,
Like the Greeks long ago,
With shield and spear and arrow
Ready to strike and throw.
I saw them as they were made
By the Christianizing crows,
Blinking, stupid, clumsy,
In their greasy ill-cut clothes:
I heard their gibbering cant,
And they sung those hymns that smell
Of poor souls besotted, degraded
With the fear of 'God' and 'Hell.'
And I thought if Jesus could see them,
He who loved the freedom, the light,
And loathed those who compassed heaven
And earth for one proselyte,
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poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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The Truth
COME then, let us at least know what's the truth.
Let us not blink our eyes and say
We did not understand; old age or youth
Benumbed our sense or stole our sight away.
It is a lie — just that, a lie — to declare
That Wages are the worth of Work.
No; they are what the Employer wills to spare
To let the Employee sheer starvation shirk.
They're the life-pittance Competition leaves,
The least for which brother'll slay brother.
He who the fruits of this hell-strife receives,
He is a thief, an assassin, and none other.
It is a lie — just that, a lie — to declare
That Rent's the interest on just gains.
Rent's the thumb-screw that makes the worker share
With him who worked not the produce of his pains.
Rent's the wise tax the human tape-worm knows.
The fat he takes; the life-lean leaves.
The holy Landlord is, as we suppose,
Just this — the model of assassin-thieves!
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poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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In The Edgware Road
(TO LORD——)
WILL you not buy? She asks you, my lord, you
Who know the points desirable in such.
She does not say that she is perfect. True,
She's not too pleasant to the sight or touch.
But then — neither are you!
Her cheeks are rather fallen in; a mist
Glazes her eyes, for all their hungry glare.
Her lips do not breathe balmy when they're kissed.
And yet she's not more loathsome than, I swear,
Your grandmother at whist.
My lord, she will admit, and need not frame
Excuses for herself, that she's not chaste.
First a young lover had her; then she came
From one man's to another's arms, with haste.
Your mother did the same.
Moreover, since she's married, once or twice
She's sold herself for certain things at night.
To sell one's body for the highest price
Of social ease and power, all girls think right.
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poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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The Answer
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! —
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poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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A Death At Sea
(Coral Sea, Australia)
I
DEAD in the sheep-pen he lies,
Wrapped in an old brown sail.
The smiling blue sea and the skies
Know not sorrow nor wail.
Dragged up out of the hold,
Dead on his last way home,
Worn-out, wizened, a Chinee old, —
O he is safe — at home!
Brother, I stand not as these
Staring upon you here.
One of earth's patient toilers at peace
I see, I revere!
II
In the warm cloudy night we go
From the motionless ship;
Our lanterns feebly glow;
Our oars drop and drip.
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Liberty!
'LIBERTY?' Is that the cry, then?
We have heard it oft of yore.
Once it had, we think, a meaning;
Let us hear it now no more.
We have read what history tells us
Of its heroes, martyrs too.
Doubtless they were very splendid,
But they're not for me and you.
There were Greeks who fought and perished,
Won from Persians deathless graves.
Had we lived then, we're aware that
We'd have been those same Greeks' slaves!
Then a Roman came who loved us;
Caesar gave men tongues and swords.
Crying 'Liberty,' they fought him,
Cato and his wild-beast lords.
When he'd give a broader franchise,
Lift the mangled nations bowed,
Crying 'Liberty!' they killed him,
Brutus and his cut-throat crowd.
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Holy Russia
CROUCHED in the terrible land,
The circle of pitiless ice,
With frozen bloody feet
And her pestilential summer's
Fever-throb in her brow,
Look, in her deep slow eyes
The mists of her sleep of faith
Stir, and a gleam of light,
The ray of a blood-red sun,
Beams out into the dusk.
From far away, from the west,
From the east, from the south, there come
Faint sweet breaths of the breeze
Of plenteous warmth and light.
And she moves, and around her neck
She feels the iron-scaled Snake
Whose fangs suck at the heart
Hid by her tattered dress,
By her lean and hanging teat.
Russia, O land of Faith,
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Algernon Charles Swinburne
SHRIEKS out of smoke, a flame of dung-straw fire
That is not quenched but hath for only fruit
What writhes and dies not in its rotten root:
Two things made flesh, the visible desire
To match in filth the skunk, the ape in ire,
Mouthing before the mirrors with wild foot
Beyond all feebler footprint of pursuit,
The perfect twanger of the Chinese lyre!
A heart with generous virtues run to seed
In vices making all a jumbled creed:
A soul that knows not love nor trust nor shame,
But cuts itself with knives to bawl and bleed —
If thou we've known of late, art still the same,
What need, O soul, to sign thee with thy name?
Once on thy lips the golden-honeyed bees
Settling made sweet the heart that was not strong,
And sky and earth and sea swooned into song:
Once on thine eyes the light of agonies
Flashed through the soul and robbed the days of ease.
But tunes turn stale when love turns babe, and long
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poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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Aux Ternes
(PARIS)
SHE. — 'Up and down, up and down,
From early eve to early day.
Life is quicker in the town;
When you've leisure, anyway!
'Down and up, down and up!
O will no one stop and speak?
I am fain to eat and sup,
All my limbs are heavy and weak.
'What's my price, sirs! I'm no Jew.
If with me you wish to sleep,
'Tis five francs, sirs. Surely you
Will admit that that is cheap?'
HE. — 'Christ, if you are not stone blind,
Stone deaf also, you know it is
Christian towns leave far behind
Sodom and those other cities.
'Bid your Father strike this town,
Wipe it utterly away!
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poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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To The Sons Of Labour
GRAVE this deep in your hearts,
Forget not the tale of the past!
Never, never believe
That any will help you, or can,
Saving only Yourselves!
What have the Gentlemen done,
Peerless haters of wrong,
Byrons and Shelleys, what?
They stand great famous Names,
Demi-gods to their own,
Shadows far off, alien
To us and ours for ever.
Those who love them and hate
The crime, the injustice they hated,
What can they do but shout,
Win a name from our woes,
And leave us just as we were?
No, but resolutely turned,
Our wants, our desires made clear,
And clear the means that shall win them,
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poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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