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The Seven Deadly Sins
(A Series of Sonnets)

and Other Verses.

BERNARD O’DOWD.

/
T. C. LOTHIAN, MELBOURNE.
1909.
 CONTENTS.

SONNETS.
The Seven Deadly Sins—
Pride 6
Avarice 8
Lust 10
Anger 12
Gluttony 14
Envy .. 16
Sloth 18
To Immanuel Kant 20
A New Tertullian 21
Endowment 22
The Cow 28
Auster Rampant! 24
Alcaeus to Sappho 25
The Churning of the Opal 27
“ 0 Storm, that swept me like a wraith of mist ” 28
In Memory of Victor J. Daley 29
True America’s Message 80
MISCELLANEOUS VERSES.
Keep Watch 32
When Love Persuades the Merest Wight .. 82
I know that I am also you 82
Dirt ol Habit Clogs the Soul 33
Tho’ Led by Angels to the Throne 33
In its Hurricanes Rudderless Swirled 83
In the Trunk of the Year Ascending 34
“ Get on, Young Man, Get on ! " 35
“ It Mattereth Not at All '* 35
The Ascetlo Call 36
Come Along ! 8 6
Our Privilege 37
Trifles 38
Resurgent 89
“ Skipping** 40
The Song-Thlng 41
Australia Mavourneen 42
Waifs of the World 44
The Poet 46
Democratize the World 48
The Bottom Dog Brigade 61
 The Sonnet* [with the exception of "Pride”
(I.), which appeared originally in “ The Trident”;
"Avarice (1.) in Mr. A. 0. Stephens' “Bookfellow” ;
“ Gluttony” (I.) in “ The Native Companion";
“ True America's Message” in “ The Socialist";
and “ Alcaeus to Sappho" and “ The Churning
of the Opal" in “ Mind and Body"] are now
published for the first time. Of the Miscellaneous
Yerses, “ Australia Mavourneen” and “ Waifs
of the World” were published in “ The Trident,"
and the others in “ The Socialist" and “Mind and
Body."
The Seven Deadly Sins.
 PRIDE.

I.

You bade the Morning Star betray the Light,

And Eden’s idyll jarred to raucous woe ;
You lured Napoleon to the fatal snow,
And drave Achilles to his sulking flight:
Crowns and the love that were the hero’s right
On meretricious swagger you bestow:
Here, venal maids to psychic squalor go,
There, frowsy Murder struts a gartered knight.

And Decadent decoys of Merlin youth,

Pragmatist Pilates of chameleon Truth,
Transvaluers anon of good to ill,
Proving that God is dead and love a sham
In radiant trope and perfect epigram,
Frequent with you our Tree of Knowledge still.
 II.
Into the ape I breathed, and you were men :
Umbrageous Art I planted on your way,
And steeped your garments in the dyes of day :
Of marbled Athens was I denizen,
And Shakespeare’s England welcomed me again
I bade your dawning godhood disobey
Nostalgias for the comfortable clay
Of tamer kin in maudlin Nature’s den.

While my disdainful cruisers guard the sea

Their comely holds no coward’s lading bear :
Never was night I led not to the m o m :
There is no mount you may not climb with me :
No god you may not challenge, if he dare
Immure the soul I lit ere he was born I

7
 AVARICE.

I.

Where Love’s environs vanish, yours begin :

Your black banditti guised as traders hold
The ports and opened routes of Peace: your bold
And sacrilegious hands part graveside kin
From tears to factioned hate : your baubles win
Caressing Judas to his treason cold :
And, alchemist of virus into gold,
You churn the ooze of every deadly sin.

Mephitic empires spread to fill your m aw :

And crowded Indigence, with wan vice flecked,
Her blotched toll yields your pitiless decree :
Your tempests wither Freedom, taint the law,
Dismantle love to whoredom, yea, have wrecked
A Universal Church on Simony.

8
 II.

None held his own, none knew his child before

My fierce tabus and jealous marriage ties ;
No leaking vat escapes my prudent eyes :
I glean the sheaves To-day’s full arms ignore
To eke distraught To-morrow’s shrunken store :
Temple and home from my gold basements rise :
And raw chaotic earth I humanize
Pulsing arterial Trade from shore to shore.

I pile the hoards that manumit the slave,

Shelter the widow and her orphans well,
Support the sower while the harvests sleep,
And tempt the modest master from his cell
To paint a Sistlne sky, a Moses grave,
Or bid Renascent fires o’er Florence leap !

y
 LUST.

I.

A shuddering deluge whelmed your wake of yore :

You razed the halls of fatal Paris’ sire :
Loaded the dice of Actium : lit the fire
Changing pale Magian to the Scarlet Whore,
Who Phrygian swine and Messalina bore,
And sterile spouses of the modern mire :
Your undertone jangles the lyric choir:
Your furtive fingers smear the lover’s lore.

Mandrake, disgorged by grave of murdered Shame,

Clinging to dozing Trust with vampire lips,
Oily with fetid Sodom, or the wan
Gomorrah-sin the ages dare not name !
Seductive wrecker of immortal ships !
Serpent of Eden ! Brothel toad ! Begone !

10
 II.
Tho* flaming swords unfit intruders warn,
I am the Tree of Life in Paradise :
I mould the savage clay to Helen, Bice :
Valkyr of souls, the chooser of the born,
I sieve the virile races from the worn :
And hermit satyrs from their caves entice
To parenthood and high self-sacriflce::
Virtue I am, though monk or eunuch scorn !

On atom, world, my Living Creatures’ breath j

Active is wheeling Life, lethargic, D eath:
Yea, when upon my noonday shrine ye can
Your sweet oblations frank and faithful burn,
The veil that darkens God shall lift from man,
Sin shall depart, the Golden Age return !

a
 ANGER.

I.

Whether from hell you grope to war’s assize :

Murder with secret glaive : wither with glance :
Poison as bigot or as Cossack prance :
Jealous disfigure darling forms you prize
With lusts that blotch your own disordered eyes :
Or for some Baptist head transmigrant dance;
You are the horn of Antichrist’s advance I
Incarnate Cain’s inveterate disguise !

Our eyes and ears you swaddle lest they heed

Reproachful birds and dewy mercy flowers :
The Peace last Sunday promised every land,
To-day your God of Battles overpowers :
But all your bolts, howe’er their targets bleed,
Somehow return to bruise the hurling hand.

12
 II.
When man had else succumbed to tooth and paw,
I was the talon on his brain, that gave
Dominion o’er the brute. The pure, the brave
Smother in natal mire when I withdraw :
Protean bonds my teeth seditious gnaw :
From stagnant Time my throbbing current drave
The Sud of coward and the scum of knave :
My balanced eric mothered Virtue, Law.

For Peace, enduring Peace, my war-songs roar :

I wreck the frowsy fane to build a shrine :
I blot the shining Past lest it should win
New scope for recreant love and victims more :
I am the Purging Flame that Eyes Divine,
Sickened of Sodom, blaze upon its sin.

i:s
 GLUTTONY.

I.

Disgusting robber of the meagre share

Of hunger-throttled Labour, and malign
Magician, who crcates of rosy wine,
Matured by God for jaded pilgrims’ fare,
Dark eucharists of passion and despair;
Who makes love base, victorious heroes swine,
And tempts man from his heritage divine,
With mess of pottage, to the madman’s lair !

You ransack zones to gorge upon a n e st:

You choke the nightingale to taste his tongue :
You stuff our ears lest from her moan we shrink
Whose baby starves that we may eat and drink :
Your harpies foul the veteran infest,
And sully with prenatal vice the young.

14
 II.
Comfort ye had not found had I not sought:
Yea, still had champed the grass, herded in dung.
And to some apish woman sated flung
The husk and slavered bone, had I not taught
The dainty secrets that my nostrils caught
From herb and fruit and flower hidden among
Your wastes, and sifted with insatiate tongue
The finer food that builds the finer thought.

I fashion for insipid joy the lute

Of savour, blend the seed and coax the soil
Until penurious Nature’s limbecs can
The meagre grass to golden corn transmute,
And juice astringent to the soothing oil,
Or wine that maketh glad the heart of man.

is
 ENVY.

I.

Black drips the ooze that you secrete on all

That Honour’s burin graves or Love holds dear :
At sacrlflce you laugh, at virtue sneer,
And sour rebellion’s must, the waking thrall
Would ripen into Freedom, with the gall
Of green suspicion. God of drones, you hear
Mutter of plots in all Success : on seer
And saint behold your own foul motives crawl.

0 Gluttony that would but dare not gorge!

Theft of the heart that dreads the handcuff ! Hate,
Too cowardly to hurl the bolts you forge !
And Lust that fears to pluck the flowers you sm ell!
Too low your lintel to seduce the g rea t!
The meanest of the Seven Doors of H ell!

le
 II.
Conjugal love my jealous patience lit
Through woods obscene and bestial marshes long :
My questions whisper ’mid your fear and wrong i
vict :

That ne’er was beauty, glory, wisdom, wit

But you however low may equal i t :
PUBUC unr.AT.YC/r

Majestic Justice is my final song,

Chording the mutual envies of the throng :
With my hard pen Equality was w rit!

Insolent Fame’s encroachment I defeat:

Damask the despot seals of What Has Been :
And bee-bread from my bitter flowers secrete
To change the sterile thrall to happy queen:
I am the quenchless Will that drives the clod,
Through crystal, mould and brute, to man and God I

17
 SLOTH

I.

Too many a Samson lip your teeth indent:

Too many a Sibyl girl you lure to make
The Great Refusal for a fireside’s sake :
And glamoured poet many a look has sent
Into those eyeballs bear-brown, somnolent,
Nor dreamed that devils in each muddy lake
Were sucking his devotion in to slake
The furrowed belly of your fanged content!

Religion’s bane and Freedom’s subtlest foe !

Behold the poppied freight your barges bring
The dim-lit souls that crave the prophet’s gleam,
Or fettered peoples writhing ’neath their woe—
Gossamer clips and thriftless harvesting
Of phantom flocks and shadowy tilth of dream !

18
 II.
My dreams dissolve the day’s illusive n e t:
While crested Action’s billows blinding beat,
Omniscient Eyes in troughs of Faith I m eet:
I wait with ancient stars until they set
Lest froward Progress should their runes forget:
I am the rest that makes the bar complete :
And, in the shackled body of Defeat,
The womb of baby Triumph living y e t!

I am the blende of sleeping Radiance :

The Siding where belated Industry
Draws from a Silent Tank to-morrow’s z e st:
Prophetic Art’s preparatory trance :
Dilating Force’s Sabbath systole :
The Night of Brahm when worn Creators rest I

10
 TO IMMANUEL KANT.

0 You, whose bridge invited me to span

Serene Despair enamoured ol his slough,
Ere gentle eyes became a lens to show
The Loving Presence and the Perfect P la n !
Copernicus, who leaped the sophists’ ban
In Konigsberg a hundred years ago,
And saw the adamantine cosmos flow
In opal streams WITHIN the mind of m an!

Where now, abstracted, stellar spires you view,

Or teach Laplace young nebulee to plant,
Fill Berkeley’s void, or Swedenborg pursue,
Or pick your steps ’mid Hume’s agnostic gins,
Send here equipped like you another Kant
To gloss these Jekylls and their deadly sins !

20
 A NEW TERTULLIAN.

Out ol the stale oppression of the room

Into the Freedom of the wind-wed blue I
Out of the mesh of spidery Order through
7: Creeds and their bat-laws to the wild flowers’ bloom !
: I Cysted salvation ! God clamped in the womb
Of mummy ! Shall it save ? What can He do ?
LICJ-l-'xiYOr

Lawless is He and made us Lawless too !

Love corseted in Law ? Deity, gloom ?

No ! Listen to the Poet Blue above

PvcUC

Carolling “ God is Good ! is ever nigh !

“ There is no sin, no darkness ! all is w ell!
“ He Is in you, in me, Is Life, Is Love ! ”
Carolling “ God is Liberty !” And I
Believe because it is impossible!

21
 ENDOWMENT.

Truth needs no penny ’neath her tongue to pay

Her passage o’er vicissitude. But when
Some Jack o’Lanthorn guide of stumbling men
Would gutter out, they bribe him here to stay,
And measure all things by his flickering ray,
Within his ambit sage and prophet pen,
Chill rosy Love with vapours of his fen,
And young Trust cheat with glows of his decay.

Cathedral fort of creeds decrepit, school

Musty withhold miasmas of the mind !
How long shall these endowed obscurants rule ?
The morning eyes of young Australia blind ?
This pestilential gratitude and gold
Palsy the New with tremors of the Old ?

22
 THE COW.

This is a rune I ravelled in the still,

Arrogant stare of an Australian cow—
“ These prankt intruders of the hornless brow,
Pulled up with strange illusions of their skill
To fence, to milk, to fatten and to kill,
Once worshipped me with temple, rite and vow,
Crowned me with stars, and bade rapt millions bow
Before what abject guess they called my w ill!

“ To-day, this flunkey of my midden, Man,

Throws child-oblations in my milking byre,
Stifles in slums to spare me lordly fields,
Flatters with spotless consorts my desire,
And for a pail of cream his birth-right yields,
As once in Egypt, Hellas, Ind, Iran !”

23
 AUSTER RAMPANT!

A larger Argo ploughs our clearer blue !

Your Zephyr won no such auroral bride
As her I woo ! The South Is whence the tide
Springs downhill to refresh the North and you 1
To melt your adamantine basements too,
When, as your sagas sang, the flaming-eyed
Children of Southern Muspel scatter wide
Your world, your gods, when Ragnarok is due I

Antipodean ? Whew ! We are the head,

The oceanic head, while you, slung low
With lands that scrape the floor of heaven, gaze,
Far o’er the Bull your odd Europa wed,
Up to the Chambers of the South where glow
Our pennant stars, our wider Milky Ways !

24
 ALCAEUS TO SAPPHO.

Tho’, when we list, ’tis ours to circle high

On lonely wings our separate peaks of song,
God In His grace decrees that we belong
To that ubiquitous sodality
Of glance magnetic and luxurious sigh
That men call Love, where, grateful in the strong
Earth-currents swirling round its wingless throng.
We too may swim together, you and I.

Though priest may foul with smoke obscene of hell,

Or pundit find obscure with caverned brute
The God of Love, and both disdain His power—
Where Love is exiled, God departs as w ell;
Scentless were Art, if Love were not its flower ;
And sapless song, if Love were not Its root.

25
I wonder as I thrill unto the tones
Vibrating in the words of love you send,
If this tame earth do not already blend
With some far larger sphere than eyesight owns ;
If life be apex of eternal cones,
With Past and Present resonant, that lend
Our pauper ears Instalments here to spend
Of wealth we won still due in happier zones.

For as I listen, swift the memories sweep,

As through a lifted veil, of days that were,
When conscious Deity did all Immerse,
And those warm words from you to me did leap,
A lightning-signal warning me prepare
To co-create with you some Universe.

26
 THE CHURNING OF THE OPAL.

In what far-sundered stars did angels And

The rebel elements of your alloy,
And what tyrannic flux to weld employ ?
^ What Cyclopean artifice combined
The Calms and Doldrums of your tropic mind,
PUBUC U 3 P.AS1V UF ViiT^rd

Where scarce the halcyons suffuse their joy

Than termagant tornadoes would destroy,
To gratify a whim, all humankind ?

Yet warring rocks harmonious landscapes build,

And ocean’s charm and air's would pall and die,
If gale and cloud did never smite nor m a r;
So, gem of mine ! whom cloistered peace distilled
In lava’s heart to mirror sea and sky,
I would not have you other than you are I
 O Storm, that swept me like a wraith of mist
From silent watches o’er a sleeping vale,
j, Until, like you a tempest, now I flail
Far seas of dim adventure : now assist
The Living Creatures of the Harmonist
Draconic Order’s battlements assail;
Or scour all lands with you to find the Grail
That holds the Proletarian Eucharist!

What perfumes of the sheltered nook can feign

The fragrance of the Winter’s hair unwound ?
What lyre, what flute, in cell or crypt, perform
The diapasons of the hurricane ?
Yet where in all the Aidenns can be found
Such perfect Peace as naves my wheeling Storm ?

28
 IN MEMORY OF VICTOR J. DALEY.

More gravely Tamarisk will smile this year,

And sadlier Lilac breathe her nuptial lays :
Rose will assemble all the dewy fays
Of her dispersion to distil one clear
Threnodic attar drop to mourn the seer
Of exiled Rose’s h e a rt: and August days,
Over the choral wattles’ vesper praise,
The yews of exiled Erin keening hear.

Yet he the last to deem the proem all,

This interlude of clay the Epilogue :
And greatlier grown, welcomes the Sunset Call,
Whether to walk our Singing Path anew,
Follow an elfin horn through Tlr-na-n-Og,
Or, ’yond the Cross, the Rose Seraphic view 1

.
1606

20
 TRUE AMERICA’S MESSAGE.

[“ Fleet ” Week, 1908].

Our manlier spirits hear and will obey

The Word YOU waft Australia o ’er the sea—
“ Be true, be brave, be merciful, be free I ”
Not you, who, braggart, sent this wan array
Of hell-ships vomiting their Will-to-Slay,
These armoured Hates and pallid Envies we,
’Mid rattled mobs and flags hysteric, see
Tarnish the chaste horizon of our B ay :

But YOU we hear, our Comrades of the Cause,

Who face hysena Mammon in his den :
And YOU, who dared your seas of blood to spill
To drag the swooning slave from vampire jaw sj
Yea, YOU who freed unborn Australia, when
You singed King George’s beard at Bunker’s HilL

30
Miscellaneous Verses.
Keep watch, tho’ blinded by his revels,
Your every comrade falters :
Be true, tho’ all the gods and devils
Would drag you to their altars ;
And love, tho’ Hate usurp God’s state
And bruise you with his halters !

When Love persuades the merest wight

To be a partner of her might—
Transcending earthly bars,
Along the plains of chrysolite
He marches with the stars.

I know that I am also you,

That you are I, that all are we ;
Time nor space can our love disperse ;
We are the captain and the crew,
Never the tempest we shall rue,
Never the drama not rehearse,
And never the port we shall not see,
For we were launched, a Universe,
On oceanic Deity.
32
 Dirt of habit clogs the soul,
Dirt of prejudice the m ind:
All around the seasons roll
Of the Year we never find
Till we clean the window-glass
Of man-made stains,
And behold thtf shining grass
Where the elf-queen reigns.

Tho’ led by angels to the Throne,

The man, whose eyes are not his own,
But alien idols there descries :
While he who sees the wayside stone
With honest eyes, can recognise
The sheen of the pearl and the glint of gem
On God’s eternal garment hem.

In its hurricanes rudderless swirled,

Every soul is a chaos, a world;
With the dews ot the Deity pearled
Every clod of the clay is a so u l;
Half-God is the Spirit, the Light;
Half-God is the matter, tho Night;
And the half and the half are the Whole.

83
 In the trunk of the year ascending,
The sap of Spring ;
The despair of the Winter ending,
The smile of Spring:
To the tryst and the nest-work calling,
The spell of Spring:
On the green-shouldered hillside falling,
The scarf of Spring.
Fresh carols for free men lilting,
The breeze of Spring :
For childhood no longer wilting,
The vow of Spring :
O'er russet of cant and lie,
The green of Spring:
For Love and for Liberty,
The Sun of Spring.

34
 " Get on, young man ! ’’ the sleek financier said.
Yes, though your mates are wan
With poisoned air and niggard dole of bread,
Though sterile Vice its elvish coveys spawn,
Though women weep for wasting babes unfed,
Though your young brain and soul unselfish wed
In some great Cause would bring the dawn
■£ And herald Hope unto these living dead —
Are you your brother’s keeper? ” still he said.
H “ Get on, young man, get on ! ”
b.
O

,, If staunch we fight in the wars of woe

li Against oppressors high or low,
a- And whether we win or fall,
Then whence we came or whither we go
It mattereth not at all.
If patient we bare the traps of greed,
If the sick we comfort, the hungry feed,
And sweeten the rue of shame,
It mattereth not at all our creed.
Our titles, or blood or fame.

35
 THE ASCETIC CALL
I have reposed too long
In shrubberies and bowers,
With laughing girls and flowers,
With luxury and song:
Afar from Life’s drab hours,
From common sweets and sours,
I have reposed too long.
Such charm was not my goal,
When God gave of His might,
Endowed me with His sight,
And hither launched my so u l:
Though flooding Love and Light
Are bathing me to-night,
Such charm was not my goal.

COME ALONG!
Jettison all your hate and gloom !
Pirate feluccas may muster strong,
Winds may intone their sinister song,
Billows gulp, and skies above
Lower with signs of an imminent doom—
On our star-lit wake there’s room, there’s room !
To the wharf of the sun and the soul, come along 1
Come along with us to Love!
 OUR PRIVILEGE.

We see the cosmic Janitors,

On every side,
All hitherto mysterious doors
Throw open wide.
Sweet perfumes, unregarded long,
From all things float;
The meanest life yields grander song
Than Homer wrote.
On every dream a Daniel rides,
On every fact a fairy :
In every child a Saviour hides,
In every mother, M ary:
On Ways Beyond, on thickets here,
Love-light is lying:
The winds of woe, tho fog of fear,
Away are dying:
The Maii-God chord is muting fast
The Dirglng Powers:
The God-Man’s immortelles at last
Become Earth’s flowers!
0 help us gather ! for our land,
Australia, longs
To bless the world with blossoms and
SubUmer songs.

37
 TRIFLES.

There are no trifles in the world

But radiantly shine;
The meanest blade of grass Is pearled
With dews of the Divine.
And he whose hearth-flre duties are
In faith sincerely done
Is great as he who lights a star
Or regulates the sun.
To simple ballad or to rhyme
Of mother by the Are,
The baton of God is keeping time,
As to the seraph choir.
No fleeting wish, but He is there,
Nor movement of routine ;
Saharas, Gobis, desert-bare,
Are with His Presence green.
Yea, He is everywhere, and so
The helmet of the brave,
The cavern of the coward foe,
The puddle and the wave,
The constellations and their dome,
The ant-hole in the sod,
Palatial grandeur, hovel-home—
All are the House of God.

38
 RESURGENT.
O'er every field a lark,
On every wattle gold ;
No gully now Is dark,
Nor sunny hillock cold ;
Up to the valley head,
From creeks alive with song,
The white fire and the red
Of heather run along;
The pink convolvulus
Demurely watches u s ;
Birds and buds and savours
Heal the scars of June ;
Spring is throwing favours,
Says she’s coming soon.
Gone the gloomy hours,
Winter and his mire ;
Softer fall the showers,
Russets leave the briar ;
Yearnings in each vein,
Signal to the brain—
The Spring ! the Spring is near !
Earth is young again ! "
And You are with me here !
 “ SKIPPING.”

Skipping down the gully hand In hand,

Drinking In the glory as we run,
Glory of the autumn o’er the land,
Glory of the gum-trees in the sun,
Wonder of the distance thro’ the haze,
Trysting of the cloudlets in the sky,
Nodding of the tassels of the maize,
Magic of the lovelight in your eye !

0 the magic, the glory, the wonder,

When the autumn is wooing the land,
And you say to your darling you love her,
While the leafage Is glinting above her,
And the clover is velvety under,
Lilting as you run,
Singing to the sun,
As you skip down the hill hand in hand I

40
 THE S0N6-THING.

Out of the song a Song-thlng flew ;

Into the briar a bee;
Out of the silence floated you
Into the storm to m e ;
The Song-thlng ripe to the moon-way rose ;
Tho briar at the bee-kiss flushed;
Your silent petals I heard unclose,
And you my tempest hushed.

0, dark-petalled flower-face, lit with the white

Of lilies, that drop from his crescented ewer,
When Wizard November lias glamoured the Night
With dreams of the Summer that hastens to woo her,
Breathe after the Song-thlng a benison due,
And pray to our God that It rest on His knee I
For we were its father, its mother, we two,
The storm and the silence, the briar, the bee !

41
 AUSTRALIA MAVOURNEEN.

No more shall I seek the Olympian throng,

Nor path of the Pynkle or Peri pursue,
Nor conjure with mantra barbaric or gong
The Mayas of Ind, to embellish the New ;
For limned in the limpid abysms of blue
That dome o’er your virginal glories there grows
A Vision delectable, mirroring you,
Australia mavourneen, my heather, my rose !

Iona, Hy-Brasil, Avllion of song

Depart, as I gaze, with the cypress and rue,
The pallor, the want, the indigenous wrong,
Each coflln-shlp realm and its decadent crew,
The hates that divide, and the tempests that brew,
Beyond in the lands of the mystical does,
The cairns and the cromlechs I loved ere I knew
Australia mavourneen, my heather, my rose !

42
So, pixies and elves who were gracious or strong,
When England was all to the children she grew,
And kelpies who glamoured the Highlands so long,
And (aeries of Erin, who beckoned us to
The beach of the sea of the so u l! Adieu !
For over an ElQand ye knew not there glows
A dawn that ye saw not, revealing to view
Australia mavourneen, my heather, my rose !

0, Ye, Whose Commands when its season is due

Each flower and each destiny open and close,
With Love and with Liberty permeate through
Australia mavourneen, my heather, my rose !

43
 WAIFS OF THE WORLD.

When over the hills of our Lord we ride

And learn in His Light to know
That atom and earth and all their pride
But veil the turbulent flow
Of a dim-lit chaotic ocean
In a cavernous vortex swirled,
We beseech Him to draw from its tyrannous motion
The waifs of the world.

Waifs of the world ! See where they fleck

The swell of the mutable Dark,
Flotsam and jetsam, lagan and wreck,
Barnacled, rudderless, s ta rk :
For sea-scum like furies contending:
Enthroning on spindrift their g re a t:
Or drugged with their pleasures to comas unending
In hammocks of Fate.

44
They are monarchs and sages their flatterers say,
They are wise in the ways of the gloom,
To the dizzy deceits of each eddy they pray
As they whirl in its whorls to their doom ;
They have gazed upon Gorgon-haired Reason
Till their souls are imprisoned in stone ;
They have banished the fairies from shore and from season
And God from His Throne.

The poor clay-folk in their crude shells curled,

Adrift on the lapping inane,
Our brothers and sisters, waifs of the world,
0 teach them to dream again I
From their lore that is suicide save them,
And scatter their formulas far !
In your lavas of Love, 0 Lover-Lord, lave them !
Illumine, 0 Star I

45
 THE POET.

They tell you the poet is useless and empty the sound of
his lyre,
That science has made him a phantom, and thinned to a
shadow his Are:
Yet reformer has never demolished a dungeon or den of
the foe
But the flame of the soul of a poet pulsated in every blow.

They tell you he hinders with tinklings, with gags from an

obsolete stage,
The dramas of deed and the worship of Laws in a practical
age:
But the deeds of to-day are the children of magical dreams
he has sung,
And the Laws are ineffable Fires that from niggardly
heaven he wrung!

The bosoms of women he sang of are heaving to-day in

our maids:
The God that he drew from the Silence our woes or our
weariness aids:
Not a maxim has needled through Time, but a poet had
feathered its shaft,
Not a law is a boon to the people but he has dictated its
draft.
And why do we fight for our fellows ? For Liberty why do
we long?
Because with the core of our nerve-cells are woven the
lightnings of song!
For the poet for ages illumined the animal dreams of
our sires,
And his Thought-Become-Flesh is the matrix of all our
unselfish desires I

Yea, why are we fain for the Beautiful ? Why would we

die for the Right?
Because through the forested sons, in spite of the priests
of the Night,
Undeterred by the faggot or cross, uncorrupted by glory
or gold,
To our mothers the poet his Vision of Goodness and
Beauty has told.

When, comrades, we thrill to the message of speaker in

highway or hall,
The voice of the poet is reaching the silenter poet in a ll :
And again, as of old, when the flames are to leap up the
turrets of Wrong,
Shall the torch of the New Revolution be lit from the
words of a Song !

47
 DEMOCRATIZE THE WORLD.

We dare not rest who soar so high,

Who live in Freedom’s te n t;
This golden fruit, Democracy,
For every man is meant.

In spite of scorn, in spite of fear,

In spite of rabid hate,
The democratic road is clear,
To all we ope its gate.

“ Fraternity! ” we call: and till

Its banner is unfurled
O’er all, we dare not pause ! We will
Democratize the world!

Shall we who bade the baron go,

Tho serf become a man,
Acknowledge baron races ? No !
Such heresy we ban.

The race that claims within its bound

Divine Equality,
And treads another on the ground,
Is building on a lie.

48
 You weak and outcast o! our own,
We sadly hear your plea,
Nor rest till you and all have grown
To manhood, equal, free:

But 11 the tale we dally hear

Too glibly from each tongue,
Of races doomed to disappear,
Of tribes whose songs are sung,
US»VJ-.Y OF V IC T O R IA

Is based on cosmic law of Good,

You too our sad ones must
Renounce the Hope of Brotherhood
And be to serfdom thrust.

Our rights as men, despite our flaws,

pysuc

Our weakness or our crime,

Proclaim as Just the alien’s cause,
Whate’er his colour, clime.

We have no race when good is done,

When Wisdom earns renown,
When Pity sends her coloured son
To rescue those who drown :

49
No race when Anacharsis claims
His equal right for a ll :
No race when Hebrew Holy Names
Unto the conscience c a ll:

With Nathan we can too be wise,

With Toussaint’s courage th rill;
At dusk Othello’s agonies
Will fairest eyelids fill:

And horror equally we feel

When devil-Maxims wed
To carnage naked Matabele,
As o’er Red Sunday’s dead.

0 Syrian Alien of that Tree

The stark white Roman grew !
With Brlsson and Girondist, we,
With Garrison and—YOU !

so
 THE BOTTOM DOG BRIGADE.
(Chant Royal).

A royal song of royal men I sing—

Companions beaconing the Dark who dare
Love the abhorred, erect the grovelling,
And cure with cleansing lips poisoned Despair.
To trees of life they lead our sisters who
From fruit of knowledge barren comfort brew
In married lust or spendthrift harlotry.
By priest or Levite undeterred, they see
The wounded felon by the road, and aid,
Outlawed Samaritans although they be,
The rankers of the Bottom Dog Brigade 1

Fierce at the throat of Prejudice they spring,

Who tallies low and high by dark or fair :
The callow races know their Phoenix wing,
Vanquished, outcast, derelict nestle there,
When arrogant the victor, for his due,
Bids bland Chicane with mordant law pursue,
Or sheep-robed Trade with wolfish usury.
“ Though red revolt the price, man must be free
“ Whoever yoke, brother whate’er his grade
“ Or colour ” —this the charter they decree—
The rankers of the Bottom Dog Brigade !
51
Where Mammon’s hirelings hand the famishing
Sermons and stones for food and raim ent: where
Blble-blnder, distraught from hunger’s sting,
With whoredom ekes the wage her masters spare:
Where match-girl’s shapely cheekbone gangrenes through:
Where Croesus fattens, while his wan mines spew
Phthisis o’er toil and leaden leprosy :
Where maniacs from tyrant keepers flee,
Or chlld-Kanakas from the cannonade
Of Dreadnoughts—THERE they march implacably,
The rankers of the Bottom Dog Brigade !

But lest a new Sicilian Vespers ring

Phlegethon from the pit, they carry rare
Grails of love, that can soothe revenge and bring
Millennia, to our dry lips. They share
The idiot’s games, and tirelessly construe
His broken drama’s elflsh cipher, to
Discover for his fumbling soul the key
His Maker surely gave. They frame the plea
Of dumb and trembling kin against the blade
Of vivisoctor Moloch’s devotee—
The rankers of the Bottom Dog Brigade !

52
Angry on Calvaries where gallows swing
Horror, and scourgings rive the wailing air,
" Why doom these waifs,” they ask Creation’s King,
“ In masquerades, arranged by You, to wear
Black dominos, yet lash them for their hue ?
If You were all, and all arose from You,
Their crime is Yours, an act i ’ the Tragedy
You wove to comfort Your dark Destiny I ”
Yet, ere Creation’s tallies close, shall fade,
In the light of the love they bore, their blasphemy—
The rankers of the Bottom Dog Brigade.

0 Love-made-man, ’mid modern apathy

Hosts you have fed, released the women we
Had stoned, consoled the thief, and devils laid,
As when You levied first In Galilee
The rankers of the Bottom Dog Brigade !

f v s u p LIBRARY OF YlC7Cr.1V

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T h e A tla s P r e s s (E . N e w la n d s ), 298 Lit* C o llin s S t., M elb o u rn e.