“ENGLAND.”

Where’er I go in this dense East,
In sunshine or shade,
I retch at the villainous feast
That England has made.

And my shame cannot understand,
As scorn springs elate,
How I ever loved that land
That now I hate!

In the dark waveless sea,
Deep blue under deep blue,
The fisher drifts by on the tide
In his small pole-balanced canoe.

Above him the cloud-clapped hills
Crown the dense jungly sweeps;
The cocoa-nut groves hedge round
The hut where the beach-wave sleeps.

Is it not better so
To be as this savage is,
Than to live the wage-slave’s life
Of hopeless agonies?