“Poor lads! And you for others’ wrongs and sins
Whose dead past greed and lust did never wince
To make your fathers, mothers, and now you
Miserable fiends in hell, must expiate, since
“We the more guilty, we the strong, the few,
Whose triumph thrusts you down into the stew,
Fear lest our victims rise and rend us, fear
This problem mad we will not listen to!
“Victims, with her your fellow-victim here,
Blind, deaf, dumb beasts, the hour shall yet appear
When men, when justicers resolute-terrible, you
Shall speak and all men tremble as they hear!”
“TYRANNY.”
(Melbourne.)
[The Delegates speak.]
“‘Tyranny’? Yes, that’s it!
We are not afraid
To face the word that’s fit
For what we’ve said!
“It’s the tyranny of the Many,
That will not allow
There’s the right to any
To seek wealth and power now
“At the expense of the Many.
Say, that one or this
Works ‘over hours’: then he
Drives us all to the abyss,
“Where, struggling together
One rises again
While the rest all together
Are stifled and slain.
“From this death-strife of brothers
Comes the tyranny of One.
That’s your sort. But we others,
We prefer our own!”