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 Magdalenè'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 a 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 a 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!
A Fool
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 or 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 souls and hearts
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 ‘mates’ 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!'
'Well, 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!'
