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 greedy 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.
A DEATH AT SEA.
(_Coral Sea_, _Australia_.)
I.
Dead in the sheep-pen he lies,
Wrapped in an old brown sail.
The smiling blue sea and the skies
Know not sorrow nor wail.
Dragged up out of the hold,
Dead on his last way home,
Worn-out, wizened, a Chinee old,—
O he is safe—at home!
Brother, I stand not as these
Staring upon you here.
One of earth’s patient toilers at peace
I see, I revere!
II.
In the warm cloudy night we go
From the motionless ship;
Our lanterns feebly glow;
Our oars drop and drip.
We land on the thin pale beach,
The coral isle’s round us;
A glade of driven sand we reach;
Our burial ground’s found us.
There we dig him a grave, jesting;
We know not his name.
What heeds he who is resting, resting?
Would I were the same!
Come away, it is over and done!
Peace and he shall not sever,
By moonlight nor light of the sun,
For ever and ever!
III.
“DIRGE.”
“Sleep in the pure driven sand,
(No one will know)
In the coral isle by the land
Where the blue tides come and go.
“Alive, thou wert poor, despised;
Dead, thou canst have
What mightiest monarchs have prized,
An eternal grave!
“Alone with the lovely isles,
With the lovely deep,
Where the sea-winds sing and the sunlight smiles
Thou liest asleep!”
III.
“AUSTRALIA:
VICTORIA—NEW SOUTH WALES—QUEENSLAND.”
THE OUTCASTS.
(_Melbourne_.)
Here to the parks they come,
The scourings of the town,
Like weary wounded animals
Seeking where to lie them down.
Brothers, let us take together
An easeful period.
There is worse than to be as we are—
Cast out, not of men but of God!
VICTORIA TO JAMES MOORHOUSE, {76}
_Bishop of Melbourne_, _who left Melbourne for the Bishopric of
Manchester_, 10_th_ _March_ 1886.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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