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, 10th March 1886.
He came, a stranger, and we gave him welcome
More as loved friend than rumour’s honoured guest.
He spoke! Were we, then, all so slack to listen?
To hail him as our wisest, noblest, best?
Why did he leave us?
He toiled! And we, we under such a leader,
Forgot all other creeds, but that he taught,
And proud of our clear answer to his summons,
Forgot all other fights but that he fought!
Why did he leave us?
He wearied! ’Twas too great, he said, the burden.
We saw it and we cried with anxious love;
“What does he (Let him back!) down in the battle?
Is not the general’s place at rest above?”
Why did he leave us?
He left us for a “wider sphere of labour!”
A tinsel seat within a House that shakes,
To herd with priests meal-mouthed, with lords and liars
That still would bind a nation’s chain that breaks!
Why did he leave us?
Farewell, then! Are there any to reproach you
In all this facile crowd that weeps and cheers?
Not one! But, ah you yet shall listen sadly
To an echo falling faint through the dead years:—
Why did he leave us?
IN THE SEA-GARDENS.
(Sydney.)
“the man of the nation.”
Yonder the band is playing
And the fine young people walk.
They are envying each other and talking
Their pretty empty talk.
There, in the shade on the outskirts,
Stretched on the grass, I see
A man with a slouch hat, smoking.
That is the man for me!
That is the Man of the Nation;
He works and much endures.
When all the rest is rotten,
He rises and cuts and cures.
He’s the soldier of the Crimea,
Fighting to honour fools;
He’s the grappler and strangler of Lee
Lord of the terrible tools.
He’s in all the conquered nations
That have won their own at last,
And in all that yet shall win it.
And the world by him goes past!
O strong sly world, this nameless
Still, much-enduring Man,
Is the hand of God that shall clutch you
For all you have done, or can!
“UPSTARTS.”
What? do you say that we, the toilers—the slaves—
(Why strain at the gnat name
Who swallow the camel thing your pocket craves?)—
That we are “just the same,”
(Nay, worse) when power is ours and wealth—that we
Are harder masters still,
More keen to ring her last from misery,
More greedy of our will?
’Tis true! And when you see men so—see us
Sneer at us, call us swine!—
“How we must love you who have made us thus,
You may perhaps divine!”