Francis William Lauderdale Adams: Verses about Freedom

PURE blue Flag of heaven
With your silver stars,
Not beside those Crosses'
Blood-stained torture-bars:
Not beside the token
The foul sea-harlot gave,
Pure blue Flag of heaven,
Must you ever wave!
No, but young exultant,
Free from care and crime,
The soulless selfish England
Of this later time:
No, but, faithful, noble
Rising from her grave,
Flag of light and liberty,
For ever must you wave!

ONE thing we praise you for that is past praise —
The dauntless eyes that faced the rain and night,
The hand that never wearied in the fight,
Till, through the dark's despair, the dawn's delays,
It rose, that vision of forgotten days,
Ireland, a Nation in her right and might,
As fearless of the lightning as the Light, —
Freedom, the noon-tide sun that shines and stays!
O brave, O pure, O hater of the wrong,
(The wrong that is as one with England's name,
Tyranny with cant of liberty, and shame
With boast of righteousness), to you belong
Trust for the hate that blinds our foes like flame,
Love for the hope that makes our hearts so strong!

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,
To make him, etcetera, etcetera, —
Then this sight, as on me or you,
Would act on him like an emetic,
And he'd have to go off and spue.
O Jesus, O man of the People,
Who died to abolish all this —
The Pharisee rank and respectable,
The Scribe and the scabrous Priest —
O Jesus, O sacred Socialist,
You would die again of shame,
If you were alive and could see
What things are done in your Name.

'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.
We have read what history tells us,
O the truthful memory clings!
Tacitus, the chartered liar,
Gloating over poisoned kings!
'Liberty!' The stale cry echoes
Past smug homesteads, tinsel thrones,
Over smoking fields and hovels,
Murdered peasants' bleaching bones.
That's the cry that mocked us madly,
Toiling in our living graves,
When hell-mines sent up the chorus;
'Britons never shall be slaves!'
'Liberty!' We care not for it!
What we care for's food, clothes, homes,
For our dear ones, toiling, waiting
For the time that never comes!

(Song of the American Sons of Labour)

The Song

O WE knew so well, dear Father,
When we answered to your call,
And the Southern Moloch stricken
Shook and tottered to his fall —
O we knew so well you loved us,
And our hearts beat back to yours
With the rapturous adoration
That through all the years endures!
Mothers, sisters bade us hasten
Sweethearts, wives with babe at breast;
For the Union, faith and freedom,
For our hero of the West!
And we wrung forth victory blood-stained
From the desperate hands of Crime,
And our Cause blazed out Man's beacon
Through the endless future time!
And forgiven, forever we bade it
Cease, that envy, hatred, strife,
As he willed, our murdered Father
That had sealed his love with life!
O dear Father, was it thus, then?
Did we this but in a dream?
Is it real, this hideous present?
Does our suffering only seem?
Bend and listen, look and tell us!
Are these joyless toilers We?
Slaves more wretched, patient, piteous
Than the slaves we fought to free!
Are these weak, worn girls and women
Those whose mothers yet can tell
How they kissed and clasped men god-like
With fierce faces fronting hell?
Bend and listen, look and tell us!
Is this silent waste, possessed
By bloat thieves and their task-masters,
Thy free, thy fair, thy fearless West?
Are these Eastern mobs of wage-slaves,
Are these cringing debauchees,
Sons of those who slung their rifles —
Shook the old Flag to the breeze?

(After reading his 'Modern Painters')
YES, you do well to mock us, you
Who knew our bitter woe —
To jeer the false, deny the true
In us blind-struggling low,
While, on your pleasant place aloft
With flowers and clouds and streams,
At our black sweat and toil you scoffed
That marred your idle dreams.
'Oh, freedom, what was that to us,'
(You'd shout down to us there),
'Except the freedom foul, vicious,
From all of good and fair?
'Obedience, faith, truth, chivalry,
To us were empty names.' —
The like to you (might we reply)
Whose noisy life proclaims
Presumption, want of human love,
Impatience, filthy breath,
The snob in soul who looks above,
Trampling on what's beneath.
When did you strive, in nobler part,
With love and gentleness,
To help one soul, to win one heart
To joy and hope and peace?
Go to, vain Prophet, without faith
In God who maketh new,
With hankerings for this putrid death,
This flesh-feast of the few,
This social structure of red mud,
This edifice of slime,
Whose bricks are bones, whose mortar's blood,
Whose pinnacle is Crime! —
Go to, for we who strain our power
For light and warmth and scope,
For wives', for children's happier hour,
Can teach you faith and hope.
Hark to the shout of those who cleared
The Missionary Ridge!
Look on those dead who never feared
The battle's bloody bridge!
Watch the stern swarm at that last breach
March up that came not thence —
And learn Democracy can teach
Divine obedience.
Pass through that South at last brought low
Where loyal freemen live,
And learn Democracy knows how
To utterly forgive.
Come then, and take this free-given bread
Of us who've scarce enough;
Hush your proud lips, bow down your head
And worship Human 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!'

(For the Irish Delegates in Australia)

DO you want to hear a story,
With a nobler praise than 'glory,'
Of a man who loved the right like heaven and loathed the wrong like
hell?
Then, that story let me tell you
Once again, though it as well you
Know as I — the splendid story of the man they call Parnell!
By the wayside of the nations,
Lashed with whips and execrations,
Helpless, hopeless, bleeding, dying, she, the Maiden Nation, lay;
And the burthen of dishonour
Weighed so grievously upon her
That her very children hid their eyes and crept in shame away.
And there as she was lying
Helpless, hopeless, bleeding, dying,
All her high-born foes came round her, fleering, jeering, as they said:
'What is freedom fought and won for?
She is down! She's dead and done for!'
And her weeping children shuddered as they crouched and whispered:
'Dead!'
Then suddenly up-starting,
All that throng before him parting,
See, a Man with firm step breaking through you central knot that gives;
And, as by some dear lost sister,
He knelt down, and softly kissed her,
And he raised his pale, proud face, and cried: 'She is not dead. She lives!
'O she lives, I say, and I here,
I am come to fight and die here
For the love my heart has for her like a slow consuming fire;
For the love of her low-lying,
For the hatred deep, undying
Of the robber lords who struck and stabbed and trod her in the mire!'
Then upon that cry bewildering,
Some of them, her hapless children —
In their hearts there leaped up hope like light when night gives birth to
day;
And, as mocks and threats defied him,
One by one they came beside him,
Till they stood, a band of heroes, sombre, desperate, at bay!
And the battle that they fought there,
And the bitter truth they taught there
To the blinded Sister-Nation suffering grievously alway,
All the wrong and rapine past hers,
Of her lords and her task-masters,
Is not this the larger hope of all as night gives birth to day?
For the lords and liars are quaking
At the People's stern awaking
From their slumber of the ages; and the Peoples slowly rise,
And with hands locked tight together,
One in heart and soul for ever,
Watch the sun of Light and Liberty leap up into the skies!
That's the story, that's the story
With a nobler praise than 'glory,'
Of the Man who loved the right like heaven and loathed the wrong like
hell,
And with calm, proud exultation
Bade her stand at last a nation,
Ireland, Ireland that is one name with the name of Charles Parnell!

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!'

(For the Australian Labour Federation)

FLING out the Flag! Let her flap and rise in the rush of the eager air,
With the ring of the wild swan's wings as she soars from the swamp and
her reedy lair.
Fling out the Flag! And let friend and foe behold, for gain or loss,
The sign of our faith and the fight we fight, the Stars of the Southern
Cross!
Oh! Blue's for the sky that is fair for all, whoever, wherever he be,
And Silver's the light that shines on all for hope and for liberty,
And that's the desire that burns in our hearts, for ever quenchless and
bright,
And that's the sign of our flawless faith and the glorious fight we fight!
What is the wealthiest land on earth, if the millions suffer and cry,
And all but the happy selfish Few would fain curse God and die?
What are the glorious Arts, as they sit and sing on their jewelled thrones,
If their hands are wet with blood and their feet befouled with festering
bones?
What are the splendid Sciences, driving Nature with a bit of steel,
If only the Rich can mount the car and the Poor are dragged at the
wheel?
Wealth is a curse, and Art a mock, and Science worse than a lie,
When they're but the gift of the greedy Thieves, the leeches that suck
men dry!
Nay, brothers, nay! it is not for this — for a land of wealth and woe —
That we hoped and trusted all these years, that we toiled and struggled
so!
It is not for a race of taskmasters and pitiful cringing slaves,
That our strength and skill raised up happy homes and dreamed of
fearless graves.
It is not for a Cause that is less than for all, that is not for Truth but a lie,
That we raise our faces and grip our hands, and lift our voices high,
As we fling out the Flag that friend and foe may see, for gain or loss,
The sign of our faith and the fight we fight, the Stars of the Southern
Cross!
As the sky above is fair for all, whoever, wherever he be,
As the blessèd stars on all shed their light of hope and of liberty:
So let the earth, this fertile earth, this well-loved Southern land,
Be fair to all, be free to all, from strand to shining strand!
Let boy and girl and woman and man in it at least be sure,
That all can earn their daily bread with hearts as proud as pure;
Let man and woman and girl and boy in it for ever be
Heirs to the best this world can give, happy, fearless, free!
Fling out the Flag! Let her flap and rise in the rush of the eager air,
With the ring of the wild swan's wings as she soars from the swamp and
her reedy lair!
Fling out the Flag! and let friend and foe behold, for gain or loss,
The sign of our faith and the fight we fight, the Stars of the Southern
Cross!
Oh! Blue's the sky that is fair for all, whoever, wherever he be,
And Silver's the light that shines on all, for hope and for liberty;
And that's the desire that burns in our hearts, for ever quenchless and
bright,
And that's the sign of our flawless faith, and the glorious fight we fight.

'Forty Years After'

COMRADE, yet a little further I would go before the night
Closes round and chills in darkness all the glorious sunset light —
Yet a little, by the cliff there, till the stately home I see
Of the man who once was with us, comrade once with you and me!
Nay, but leave me, pass alone there; stay awhile and gaze again
On the various-jewelled waters and the dreamy southern main,
For the evening breeze is sighing in the quiet of the hills,
Moving down in cliff and terrace to the singing sweet sea-rills,
While the river, silent-stealing, thro' the copse and thro' the lea
Winds her waveless way eternal to the welcome of the sea.
Yes, within that green-clad homestead, gardened grounds and velvet ease
Of a home where culture reigneth and the chambers whisper peace,
Is the Man, the Seer and Singer, who (ah, years and years away!)
Lifted up a face of gladness at the breaking of the day.
For the noontide's desperate ardours that had seen the Roman town
Wrap the boy Keats, 'by the hungry generations trodden down,'
In his death-shroud with the ashes of the fairy Child of Storm,
Fluttering skylark in the breakers, caught and smothered by the foam,
And had closed those eyes heroic, weary for the final peace,
Byron maimed and maddened, strangled in the anguish that was
Greece —
For this noontide passed to darkness, brooding doubt and wild dismay,
Where the silly sparrows chirruped and the eagles swooped away,
Till once more the trampled Peoples and the murdered soul of Man
Raised a haggard face half-wondering where the new-born Day began,
Where the sign of Faith's renewal, Faith's and Hope's, and Love's,
outgrew
In the golden sun arising; and we hailed it, we and you!
O you hailed it, and your heart beat, and your pretty woman's lays,
In the fathomless vibration of our rapturous amaze,
Died for ever on your harpstrings, and you rose and struck a chord
High, full, clear, heroic, godlike, 'for the glory of the Lord!'
Noble words you spoke; we listened; and we dreamed the day had come
When the faith of God and Christ should sound one cry with Man's
freedom —
When the men who stood beside us, eager with hell's troops to cope,
Radiant, thrilled exultant, proud, with the magnificence of hope!
'Forward! forward!' ran our watchword. 'Forward! forward!' by our
side
You gave back the glorious summons. Would that day that you had died!
Better lying fallen, death-struck, breathless, bleeding, on your face,
With your bright sword pointing onward, dying happy in your place!
Better to have passed in spirit from the battle-storm's eclipse
With the great Cause in your heart and with the war-shout on your lips!
Better to have fallen charging, having known the nobler time,
In the fiery cheer and impulse of our serried battle-line —
Than to stand and watch your comrades, in the hail of fire and lead,
Up the slopes and thro' the smoke-clouds, thro' the dying and the dead,
Till the sun strikes through a moment, to our one victorious shout,
On our bayonets bristling brightly as we carry the redoubt!
O half-hearted, pusillanimous, faltering heart and fuddled brain
That remembered Egypt's flesh-pots, and turned back and dreamed
again —
Left the plain of blood and battle for the quiet of the hills,
And the sunny soft contentment that the woody homestead fills.
There you sat and sang of Egypt, of its sober solid graves,
(Pyramids, you call them, Sphinxes), mortared with the blood of slaves,
Houses, streets and stately palaces, the mart, the regal stew
Where freedom 'broadens down' so slow it stops with lords and you!
O you mocked at our confusion, O you told us of our crimes,
Us ungentle, not like warriors of the sweet idyllic times,
Flowers of eunuch-hearted kings and courts where pretty poet knights
Tilted gaily, or slew stake-armed peasants, hundreds, in the fights?
O you drew the hideous picture of our bravest and our best,
Patient martyrs, desperate swordsmen, for the Cause that gives not
rest —
Men of science, 'vivisectors!' democrats, the 'rout of beasts' —
Writers, essayists and poets, 'Belial's prophets, Moloch's priests!'
Coward, you have made the great refusal! you have won the gilded
praise
Of the wringers of his heart's-blood from the peasant's sunless days,
Of the Lord and the Land-owner, of the Rich-man who has bound
Labour on the wheel to break him, strew his rent limbs on the ground,
With a vulture eye aglare on brothers, sisters that he had,
Crying 'Troops and guns to shoot them, if the hunger drive them mad!'
Coward, faithless, unbelieving, that had courage but to take
What of pleasure and of beauty men have won for manhood's sake,
Blustering long and loudest at the hideousness and pain
These you praise have brought upon us; blustering long and loud again
At our agony and anguish in this desperate fight of ours,
Grappling with anarch custom and the darkness and the powers!
O begone, then, from among us! Echo not, however faint,
Our great watch-word, our great war-shout, sweet and sickly poet saint!
Sit there dreaming in your gardens, looking out upon the sea,
Till the night-time closes round you and the wind is on the lea.
Enter then within your chambers in the rich and quiet light:
Never think of us who struggle in the tempest and the night.
Soothe your fancy with your visions; bend a gracious senile ear
To the praise your guests are murmuring in the tone you love to hear.
Honoured of your Queen, and honoured of the gentlest and the best,
Lord and commoner and rich-man, smirking tenant, shopman, priest,
All distinguished and respectable, the seamy sons of light,
O what, O what are these who call you coward in the night?
Ay, what are we who struggled for the cause of Science, say,
Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Haeckel, marshalling our stern array?
We who raised the cry for Culture, Goethe's spirit leading on,
Marching gladly with our captains, Renan, Arnold, Emerson?
We, we are not tinkers, tinkers of the kettle cracked and broke,
Tailors squatted cross-legged, patching at the greasy, worn-out cloak!
We are those that faced mad Fortune, cried: 'The Truth and only she!
Onward, upward! If we perish, we at least will perish free!'
We have lost our souls to win them, in the house and in the street
Falling stabbed and poisoned, making a victory of defeat.
We have lost life's happy present, we have paid death's heavy debt,
We have won, have won the Future, and its sons shall not forget!
Enter, then, within your chamber in the rich and quiet light:
Never think of us who struggle in the tempest and the night;
Spread your nostrils to the incense, hearken to the murmured hymn
Of the praising people, rising from the temple fair and dim.
Ah, but we here in the tempest, we here struggling in the night,
See the worshippers out-stealing; see the temple emptying quite;
See the godhead turning ghostlike; see the pride of name and fame
Paling slowly, sad and sickly, with forgetfulness and shame! . . .
Darker, darker grows the night now, louder, louder howls the wind;
I can hear the dash of breakers and the deep sea moves behind,
I can see the foam-capped phalanx rushing on the crumbling shore,
Slowly but surely shattering its rampart evermore.
Hark! my comrade's voice is calling, and his solitary cry
On the great dark swift air-currents like Fate's summons sweepeth by.
Farewell, then, whom once I loved so, whom a boy I thrilled to hear
Urging courage and reliance, loathing acquiescent fear.
I must leave you; I must wander to a strange and distant land,
Facing all that Fate shall give me with her hard unequal hand —
I once more anew must face them, toil and trouble and disease,
But these a man may face and conquer, for there waits him death and
peace
And the freedom from dishonour and denial e'er confessed
Of what he knows is truest, what most beautiful and best!
O farewell, then! I must leave you. You have chosen. You are right.
You have made the great refusal; you have shunned the wind and night.
You have won your soul, and won it — No, not lost it as they tell —
Happy, blest of gods and monarchs, O a long, a long farewell!
Freshwater, Isle of Wight.