Francis William Lauderdale Adams: Verses about England

WHERE'ER I go in this dense East,
In sunshine or shade,
I retch at the villainous feast
That England has made,
And my shame cannot understand,
As scorn springs elate,
How I ever loved that land
I loathe and hate!

WAS it for nothing in the years gone by,
O my love, O my friend,
You thrilled me with your noble words of faith? —
Hope beyond life, and love, love beyond death!
Yet now I shudder, and yet you did not die,
O my friend, O my love!
Was it for nothing in the dear dead years,
O my love, O my friend,
I kissed you when you wrung my heart from me,
And gave my stubborn hand where trust might be?
Yet then I smiled, and see, these bitter tears,
O my friend, O my love!
No bitter words to say to you have I,
O my love, O my friend!
That faith, that hope, that love was mine, not yours!
And yet that kiss, that clasp endures, endures.
I have no bitter words to say. Good-bye,
O my friend, O my love!

I
THERE was a time when all thy sons were proud
To speak thy name,
England, when Europe echoed back aloud
Thy fearless fame:
When Spain reeled shattered helpless from thy guns
And splendid ire,
When from Canadian snows to Indian suns
Pitt's soul was fire.
O that in days like these were, fair and free
From shame and scorn,
Fate had allowed, benignly, pityingly
That I was born!
O that, if struck, then struck with glorious wounds,
I bore apart
(Not torn with fangs of leprous coward hounds)
My bleeding heart!
II
We hate You — not because of cruel deeds
Staining a glorious effort. They who live
Learn in this earth to give and to forgive,
Where heart and soul are noble and fate's needs
Imperious: No, nor yet that cruel seeds
Of power and wrong you've sown alternative,
We hate You, we your sons who yet believe
That truth and justice are not empty creeds!
No, but because of greed and garbled pay,
Wages of sin and death: because you smother
Your conscience, making cursèd all the day.
Bible in one hand, bludgeon in the other,
Cain-like you come upon and slay your brother,
And, kneeling down, thank God for it, and pray!
III
I whom you fed with shame and starved with woe,
I wheel above You,
Your fatal vulture, for I hate You so,
I almost love You!
I smell your ruin out. I light and croak
My sombre lore,
As swaggering You go by, O 'heart of oak'
Rotten to the core!
Look westward! Ireland's vengeful eyes are cast
On freedom won.
Look eastward! India stirs from sleep at last.
You are undone!
Look southward, where Australia hears your voice,
And turns away!
O brutal Hypocrite, she makes her choice
With the rising day!
Foul Esau, you who sold your high birthright
For gilded mud,
Who did the wrong and, priestlike, called it right,
And swindled God! —
The hour is gone of insult, pain and patience;
The hour is come
When they arise, the faithful mightier Nations,
To drag you down!
IV
England, the land I loved
With passionate pride,
For hate of whom I live
Who for love had died,
Can I, while shines the sun,
That hour regain
When I again may come to you
And love again?
No, not while that Flag
Of greed and lust
Flaunts in the air, untaught
To drag the dust! —
Never, till expiant,
I see You kneel,
And, brandished, gleams aloft
The foeman's steel!
Ah, then to speed, and laugh,
As my heart caught the knife
'Mother, I love you! Here,
Here is my life!'

FROM the dusty jaded sunlight of the careless Cairo streets,
Through the open bedroom window where the pale blue held the
palms,
There came a sound of music, thrilling cries and rattling beats,
That startled me from slumber with a shock of sweet alarms
For beneath this rainless heaven with this music in my ears
I was born, and all my boyhood with its joy was glorified,
And for me the ranging Red-coats hold a passion of bright tears,
And the glancing of the bayonets lights a hell of savage pride.
So I leaped and ran, and looked,
And I stood, and listened there,
Till I heard the fifes and drums,
Till I heard the fifes and drums,
The fifes and drums of England
Thrilling all the alien air! —
And 'England, England, England,'
I heard the wild fifes cry,
'We are here to rob for England,
And to throttle liberty!'
And 'England, England, England,'
I heard the fierce drums roar,
'We are tools for pious swindlers
And brute bullies evermore!'
And the silent Arabs crowded, half-defiant, half-dismayed.
And the jaunty fifers fifing flung their challenge to the breeze,
And the drummers kneed their drums up as the reckless drumsticks
played,
And the Tommies all came trooping, tripping, slouching at their ease.
Ah Christ, the love I bore them for their brave hearts and strong
Ah! Christ, the hate that smote me for their stupid dull conceits —
I know not which was greater, as I watched their conquering bands
In the dusty jaded sunlight of the sullen Cairo streets.
And my dream of love and hate
Surged, and broke, and gathered there,
As I heard the fifes and drums,
As I heard the fifes and drums,
The fifes and drums of England
Thrilling all the alien air! —
And 'Tommy, Tommy, Tommy,'
I heard the wild fifes cry,
'Will you never know the England
For which men, not fools, should die?'
And 'Tommy, Tommy, Tommy,'
I heard the fierce drums roar,
'Will you always be a cut-throat
And a slave for evermore?'
No, I shall never see it with these weary death-dim eyes,
The hour of Retribution, the hour of Fate's desire,
When before the outraged millions, as at last — at last they rise,
The rogues and thieves of England are as stubble to the fire!
When the gentlemen of England, eaten out with lust and sin,
When the shop-keepers of England, sick with godly greed as well,
Face the Red-coats and the Red-shirts, as the steel-ring closes in
And hurls them, howling madly, down the precipice of hell!
But O, I knew, that hour,
Standing sick and dying there,
As I heard the fifes and drums,
As I heard the fifes and drums,
The fifes and drums of England
Thrilling all the alien air!
And 'Tommy, Tommy, Tommy,'
I heard the wild fifes cry,
'It is time to cease your fooling;
It is time to do or die!'
And 'Johnnie, Johnnie, Johnnie,'
I heard the fierce drums roar,
'It is time to break your fetters
And be free for evermore!'

An Address on her Jubilee Year

MADAM, you have done well! Let others with praise unholy,
Speech addressed to a woman who never breathed upon earth,
Daub you over with lies or deafen your ears with folly,
I will praise you alone for your actual imminent worth.
Madam, you have done well! Fifty years unforgotten
Pass since we saw you first, a maiden simple and pure.
Now when every robber Landlord, Capitalist rotten,
Hated oppressors, praise you — Madam, we are quite sure!
Never once as a foe, open foe, to the popular power,
As nobler kings and queens, have you faced us, fearless and bold:
No, but in backstairs fashion, in the stealthy twilight hour,
You have struggled and struck and stabbed, you have bartered and
bought and sold!
Melbourne, the listless liar, the gentleman blood-beslavered,
Disraeli, the faithless priest of a cynical faith outworn —
These were dear to your heart, these were the men you favoured,
Those whom the People loved were fooled and flouted and torn!
Never in one true cause, for your people's sake and the light's sake,
Did you strike one honest blow, did you speak one noble word:
No, but you took your place, for the sake of wrong and the night's sake,
Ever with blear-eyed wealth, with the greasy respectable herd.
Not as some robber king, with a resolute minister slave to you,
Did you swagger with force against us to satisfy your greed:
No, but you hoarded and hid what your loyal people gave to you,
Golden sweat of their toil, to keep you a queen indeed!
Pure at least was your bed? pure was your Court? — We know not.
Were the white sepulchres pure? Gather men thorns of grapes?
Your sons and your blameless Spouse's, certes, as Galahads show not.
Round you gather a crowd of horrible hypocrite shapes!
Never, sure, did one woman produce in such sixes and dozens
Such intellectual canaille as this that springs from you;
Sons, daughters, grandchildren, with uncles, aunts and cousins,
Not a man or a woman among them — a wretched crew!
Madam, you have done well! You have fed all these to repletion —
You have put up a gilded calf beside a gilded cow,
And bidden men and women behold the forms of human completion —
Albert the Good, Victoria the Virtuous, for ever — and now!
But what to you were our bravest and best, man of science and poet,
Struggling for Light and Truth, or the Women who would be free?
Carlyle, Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Arnold? We know it —
Tennyson slavers your hand; Burdett-Coutts fawns at your knee!
Good, you were good, we say. You had no wit to be evil.
Your purity shines serene over virgins mangled and dead.
You wasted not our substance in splendour, in riot or revel —
You quietly sat in the shade and grew fat on our wealth instead.
Madam, you have done well! To you, we say, has been given
A wit past the wit of women, a supercomputable worth.
Of you we can say, if not 'of such are the Kingdom of Heaven,'
Of such (alas for us!), of such are the Kingdom of Earth!