HER POEM: “MY BABY GIRL, THAT WAS BORN AND DIED ON THE SAME DAY.” “Ah, with torn heart I see them still, Wee unused clothes and empty cot. Though glad my love has missed the ill That falls to woman’s lot. “No tangled paths for her to tread Throughout the coming changeful years; No desperate weird to dree and dread; No bitter lonely tears! “No woman’s piercing crown of thorns Will press my aching baby’s brow; No starless nights, no sunless morns, Will ever greet her now. “The clothes that I had wrought with care Through weary hours for love’s sweet sake Are laid aside, and with them there A heart that seemed to break.” TO HENRY GEORGE IN AMERICA. Not for the thought that burns on keen and clear, Heat that the heat has turned from red to white, The passion of the lone remembering night One with the patience day must see and hear— Not for the shafts the lying foemen fear, Shot from the soul’s intense self-centring light— But for the heart of love divine and bright, We praise you, worker, thinker, poet, seer! Man of the People,—faithful in all parts, The veins’ last drop, the brain’s last flickering dole, You on whose forehead beams the aureole That hope and “certain hope” alone imparts— Us have you given your perfect heart and soul; Wherefore receive as yours our souls and hearts! “ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.” Shrieks out of smoke, a flame of dung-straw fire That is not quenched but hath for only fruit What writhes and dies not in its rotten root: Two things made flesh, the visible desire To match in filth the skunk, the ape in ire, {87a} Mouthing before the mirrors with wild foot Beyond all feebler footprint of pursuit, The perfect twanger of the Chinese lyre! A heart with generous virtues run to seed In vices making all a jumbled creed: A soul that knows not love nor trust nor shame, But cuts itself with knives to bawl and bleed— If thou we’ve known of late, art still the same, What need, O soul, to sign thee with thy name? Once on thy lips the golden-honeyed bees Settling made sweet the heart that was not strong, And sky and earth and sea burst into song: {87b} Once on thine eyes the light of agonies Flashed through the soul and robbed the days of ease. {87c} But tunes turn stale when love turns babe, and long The exiled gentlemen grow fat with wrong. And peasants, workmen, beggars, what are these? {87d} O you who sang the Italian smoke above,— Mud-lark of Freedom, pipe of that vile band Whose envy slays the tyrant, not the love Of these poor souls none have the keeping of— It is your hand—it is your pandar hand Smites the bruised mouth of pilloried Ireland! TO AN UNIONIST.