Songs of the Army of the Night

by Francis Adams

FAREWELL TO THE CHILDREN.

In the early summer morning
I stand and watch them come,
The children to the school-house;
They chatter and laugh and hum.

The little boys with satchels
Slung round them, and the girls
Each with hers swinging in her hand;
I love their sunny curls.

I love to see them playing,
Romping and shouting with glee,
The boys and girls together,
Simple, fearless, free.

I love to see them marching
In squads, in file, in line,
Advancing and retreating,
Tramping, keeping time.

Sometimes a little lad
With a bright brave face I’ll see,
And a wistful yearning wonder
Comes stealing over me.

For once I too had a darling;
I dreamed what he should do,
And surely he’d have had, I thought,
Just such a face as you.

And I, I dreamed to see him
Noble and brave and strong,
Loving the light, the lovely,
Hating the dark, the wrong,—

Loving the poor, the People,
Ready to smile and give
Blood and brain to their service,
For them to die or live!

No matter, O little darlings!
Little boys, you shall be
My citizens for faithful labour,
My soldiers for victory!

Little girls, I charge you
Be noble sweethearts, wives,
Mothers—comrades the sweetest,
Fountains of happy lives!

Farewell, O little darlings!
Far away,—with strangers, too—
He sleeps, the little darling,
I dreamed to see like you.

And I, O little darlings,
I have many miles to go,
And where I too may stop and sleep,
And when, I do not know.

But I charge you to remember
The love, the trust I had,
That you’d be noble, fearless, free,
And make your country glad!

That you should toil together,
Face whatever yet shall be,
My citizens for faithful labour,
My soldiers for victory!

I charge you to remember;
I bless you with my hand,
And I know the hour is coming
When you shall understand:

When you shall understand too,
Why, as I said farewell,
Although my lips were smiling,
The shining tears down fell.

EPODE.
“On the Ranges, Queensland.”

Beyond the night, down o’er the labouring East,
I see light’s harbinger of dawn released:
Upon the false gleam of the ante-dawn,
Lo, the fair heaven of day-pursuing morn!

Beyond the lampless sleep and perishing death
That hold my heart, I feel my new life’s breath,
I see the face my spirit-shape shall have
When this frail clay and dust have fled the grave.

Beyond the night, the death of doubt, defeat,
Rise dawn and morn, and life with light doth meet,
For the great Cause, too,—sure as the sun yon ray
Shoots up to strike the threatening clouds and say;
“I come, and with me comes the victorious Day!”

When I was young, the muse I worshipped took me,
Fearless, a lonely heart, to look on men.
“’Tis yours,” said she, “to paint this show of them
Even as they are!” Then smiling she forsook me.

Wherefore with passionate patience I withdrew,
With eyes from which all loves, hates, hopes, and fears,
Joys aureole, and the blinding sheen of tears,
Were purged away. And what I saw I drew.

Then, as I worked remote, serene, alone,
A child-girl came to me and touched my cheek,
And lo her lips were pale, her limbs were weak,
Her eyes had thirst’s desire and hunger’s moan.

She said: “I am the soul of this sad day
Where thousands toil and suffer hideous Crime,
Where units rob and mock the empty time
With revel and rank prayer and deaths display!”

I said: “O child, how shall I leave my songs,
My songs and tales, the warp and subtle woof
Of this great work and web, in your behoof
To strive and passionately sing of wrongs?

“Child, is it nothing that I here fulfil
My heart and soul? that I may look and see
Where Homer bends and Shakspere smiles on me,
And Goethe praises the unswerving will?”

She hung her head, and straight, without a word,
Passed from me. And I raised my conscious face
To where, in beauteous power in her place,
She stood, the muse, my muse, and watched and heard.

Her proud and marble brow was faintly flushed;
Upon her flawless lips, and in her eyes
A mild light flickered as the young sunrise,
Glad, sacred, terrible, serene and hushed.

Then I cried out, and rose with pure wrath wild,
Desperate with hatred of Fate’s slavery
And this cold cruel demon. With that cry,
I left her, and sought out the piteous child.

“Darling, ’tis nothing that I shed and weep
These tears of fire that wither all the heart,
These bloody sweats that drain and sear and smart,
I love you, and you’ll kiss me when I sleep!”

The End.

AUSTRALIAN PRESS NOTICES.

“This volume holds within its slim covers more restrained power, inward, incisive vision, and passionate pity than any volume of verse that has seen the light in the Southern Hemisphere (always, of course, excepting the complete ‘Poetical Works’ of the same author). That is a bewildering book, a veritable thousand islands of passion, pathos, poetry, set in a restless, weary sea. . . The uncontrollable out-bursts of a noble, tender soul maddened by the misery and hypocrisy of our cannibal civilisation,

This putrid death,
This flesh-feast of the few,
This social structure of red mud,
This edifice of slime,
Whose bricks are bones, whose mortar blood,
Whose pinnacle is crime!

Hemorrhages from the very vitals of one tortured in Hell. Not the quaint conglomeration of bottomless brimstone and three-tined forks, but the now non-exploding self-adjusting patent Hell ‘of our own manufacture,’ whose seventh hopeless circle centres in the old village by the Thames—(trade mark, ‘Commerce and Christ.’)”—Sydney Jephcott, “Australian Standard.”