A Channel Passage and Other Poems Part 8

"Could others deign to dare such deeds As holiest Ireland hallows? Nay, But justice then makes plain our way: Be laws burnt up like burning weeds That vex the face of day.

"Shall bloodmongers be held of us Blood-guilty? Hands reached out for gold Whereon blood rusts not yet, we hold Bloodless and blameless: ever thus Have good men held of old.

"Fair Freedom, fledged and imped with lies, Takes flight by night where murder lurks, And broods on murderous ways and works, Yet seems not hideous in our eyes As Austrians or as Turks.

"Be it ours to undo a woful past, To bid the bells of concord chime, To break the bonds of suffering crime, Slack now, that some would make more fast: Such teaching comes of time."

So pleads the gentlest heart that lives, Whose pity, pitiless for all Whom darkling terror holds in thrall, Toward none save miscreants yearns, and gives Alms of warm tears--and gall.

Hear, England, and obey: for he Who claims thy trust again to-day Is he who left thy sons a prey To shame whence only death sets free: Hear, England, and obey.

Thy spoils he gave to deck the Dutch; Thy n.o.blest pride, most pure, most brave, To death forlorn and sure he gave; Nor now requires he overmuch Who bids thee dig thy grave.

Dig deep the grave of shame, wherein Thy fame, thy commonweal, must lie; Put thought of aught save terror by; To strike and slay the slayer is sin; And Murder must not die.

Bind fast the true man; loose the thief; Shamed were the land, the laws accursed, Were guilt, not innocence, amerced; And dark the wrong and sore the grief, Were tyrants too coerced.

The fiercest cowards that ever skulked, The cowardliest hounds that ever lapped Blood, if their horde be tracked and trapped, And justice claim their lives for mulct, Gnash teeth that flashed and snapped.

Bow down for fear, then, England: bow, Lest worse befall thee yet; and swear That nought save pity, conscience, care For truth and mercy, moves thee now To call foul falsehood fair.

So shalt thou live in shame, and hear The lips of all men laugh thee dead; The wide world's mockery round thy head Shriek like a storm-wind: and a bier Shall be thine honour's bed.

APOSTASY

_Et Judas m'a dit: Traitre!_--VICTOR HUGO

I

Truths change with time, and terms with truth. To-day A statesman wors.h.i.+ps union, and to-night Disunion. Shame to have sinned against the light Confounds not but impels his tongue to unsay What yestereve he swore. Should fear make way For treason? honour change her livery? fright Clasp hands with interest? wrong pledge faith with right?

Religion, mercy, conscience, answer--Yea.

To veer is not to veer: when votes are weighed, The numerous tongue approves him renegade Who cannot change his banner: he that can Sits crowned with wreaths of praise too pure to fade.

Truth smiles applause on treason's poisonous plan: And Cleon is an honourable man.

II

Pure faith, fond hope, sweet love, with G.o.d for guide, Move now the men whose blameless error cast In prison (ah, but love condones the past!) Their subject knaves that were--their lords that ride Now laughing on their necks, and now bestride Their va.s.sal backs in triumph. Faith stands fast Though fear haul down the flag that crowned her mast And hope and love proclaim that truth has lied.

Turn, turn, and turn--so bids the still small voice, The changeless voice of honour. He that stands Where all his life he stood, with bribeless hands, With tongue unhired to mourn, reprove, rejoice, Curse, bless, forswear, and swear again, and lie, Stands proven apostate in the apostate's eye.

III

Fraud shrinks from faith: at sight of swans, the raven Chides blackness, and the snake recoils aghast In fear of poison when a bird flies past.

Thersites brands Achilles as a craven; The shoal fed full with s.h.i.+pwreck blames the haven For murderous l.u.s.t of lives devoured, and vast Desire of doom whose feast is mercy's fast: And Bacon sees the traitor's mark engraven Full on the front of Ess.e.x. Grief and shame Obscure the chaste and sunlike spirit of Oates At thought of Russell's treason; and the name Of Milton sickens with superb disgust The heaving heart of Waller. Wisdom dotes, If wisdom turns not tail and licks not dust.

IV

The sole sweet land found fit to wed the sea, With reptile rebels at her heel of old, Set hard her heel upon them, and controlled The cowering poisonous peril. How should she Cower, and resign her trust of empire? Free As winds and waters live the loyal-souled And true-born sons that love her: nay, the bold Base knaves who curse her name have leave to be The loud-tongued liars they are. For she, beyond All woful years that bid men's hearts despond, Sees yet the likeness of her ancient fame Burn from the heavenward heights of history, hears Not Leicester's name but Sidney's--faith's, not fear's-- Not Gladstone's now but only Gordon's name.

RUSSIA: AN ODE

1890

I

Out of h.e.l.l a word comes hissing, dark as doom, Fierce as fire, and foul as plague-polluted gloom; Out of h.e.l.l wherein the sinless d.a.m.ned endure More than ever sin conceived of pains impure; More than ever ground men's living souls to dust; Worse than madness ever dreamed of murderous l.u.s.t.

Since the world's wail first went up from lands and seas Ears have heard not, tongues have told not things like these.

Dante, led by love's and hate's accordant spell Down the deepest and the loathliest ways of h.e.l.l, Where beyond the brook of blood the rain was fire, Where the scalps were masked with dung more deep than mire, Saw not, where the filth was foulest, and the night Darkest, depths whose fiends could match the Muscovite.

Set beside this truth, his deadliest vision seems Pale and pure and painless as a virgin's dreams.

Maidens dead beneath the clasping lash, and wives Rent with deadlier pangs than death--for shame survives, Naked, mad, starved, scourged, spurned, frozen, fallen, deflowered, Souls and bodies as by fangs of beasts devoured, Sounds that h.e.l.l would hear not, sights no thought could shape, Limbs that feel as flame the ravenous grasp of rape, Filth of raging crime and shame that crime enjoys, Age made one with youth in torture, girls with boys, These, and worse if aught be worse than these things are, Prove thee regent, Russia--praise thy mercy, Czar.

II

Sons of man, men born of women, may we dare Say they sin who dare be slain and dare not spare?

They who take their lives in hand and smile on death, Holding life as less than sleep's most fitful breath, So their life perchance or death may serve and speed Faith and hope, that die if dream become not deed?

Nought is death and nought is life and nought is fate Save for souls that love has clothed with fire of hate.

These behold them, weigh them, prove them, find them nought, Save by light of hope and fire of burning thought.

What though sun be less than storm where these aspire, Dawn than lightning, song than thunder, light than fire?

Help is none in heaven: hope sees no gentler star: Earth is h.e.l.l, and h.e.l.l bows down before the Czar.

All its monstrous, murderous, lecherous births acclaim Him whose empire lives to match its fiery fame.

Nay, perchance at sight or sense of deeds here done, Here where men may lift up eyes to greet the sun, h.e.l.l recoils heart-stricken: horror worse than h.e.l.l Darkens earth and sickens heaven; life knows the spell, Shudders, quails, and sinks--or, filled with fierier breath, Rises red in arms devised of darkling death.

Pity mad with pa.s.sion, anguish mad with shame, Call aloud on justice by her darker name; Love grows hate for love's sake; life takes death for guide.

Night hath none but one red star--Tyrannicide.

III

"G.o.d or man, be swift; hope sickens with delay: Smite, and send him howling down his father's way!

Fall, O fire of heaven, and smite as fire from h.e.l.l Halls wherein men's torturers, crowned and cowering, dwell!

These that crouch and shrink and shudder, girt with power-- These that reign, and dare not trust one trembling hour-- These omnipotent, whom terror curbs and drives-- These whose life reflects in fear their victims' lives-- These whose breath sheds poison worse than plague's thick breath-- These whose reign is ruin, these whose word is death, These whose will turns heaven to h.e.l.l, and day to night, These, if G.o.d's hand smite not, how shall man's not smite?"

So from hearts by horror withered as by fire Surge the strains of unappeasable desire; Sounds that bid the darkness lighten, lit for death; Bid the lips whose breath was doom yield up their breath; Down the way of Czars, awhile in vain deferred, Bid the Second Alexander light the Third.

How for shame shall men rebuke them? how may we Blame, whose fathers died, and slew, to leave us free?

We, though all the world cry out upon them, know, Were our strife as theirs, we could not strike but so; Could not cower, and could not kiss the hands that smite; Could not meet them armed in sunlit battle's light.

Dark as fear and red as hate though morning rise, Life it is that conquers; death it is that dies.