Francis William Lauderdale Adams: Verses about Power

(PARIS)

I STOOD in Père-la-Chaise. The putrid City,
Paris, the harlot of the nations, lay,
The bug-bright thing that knows not love nor pity,
Flashing her bare shame to the summer's day.
Here where I stand, they slew you, brothers, whom
Hell's wrongs unutterable had made as mad.
The rifle shots re-echoed in his tomb,
The gilded scoundrel's who had been so glad.
O Morny, O blood-sucker of thy race —
O brain, O hand that wrought out empire that
The lust in one for power, for tinsel place,
Might rest; one lecher's hungry heart grow fat —
Is it for nothing, now and evermore,
O you whose sin in life had death in ease,
The murder of your victims beats the door
Wherein your careless carrion lies at peace?

(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!

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!