'TIS not when I am here,
In these homeless homes,
Where sin and shame and disease
And foul death comes;
'Tis not when heart and brain
Would be still and forget
Men and women and children
Dragged down to the pit:
But when I hear them declaiming
Of 'liberty,' 'order,' and 'law,'
The husk-hearted Gentleman
And the mud-hearted Bourgeois,
That a sombre hateful desire
Burns up slow in my breast
To wreck the great guilty Temple,
And give us rest!

More verses by Francis William Lauderdale Adams