By the wayside of the nations,
Lashed with whips and execrations,
Helpless, hopeless, bleeding, dying, she, the Maiden Nation, lay;
And the burthen of dishonour
Weighed so grievously upon her
That her very children hid their eyes and crept in shame away.
And there as she was lying
Helpless, hopeless, bleeding, dying,
All her high-born foes came round her, fleering, jeering, as they said:
“What is freedom fought and won for?
She is dead! She’s down and done for!”
And her weeping children shuddered as they crouched and whispered: “Dead!”
Then suddenly up-starting,
All that throng before him parting,
See, a man with firm step breaking through that central knot that gives;
And, as by some dear lost sister,
He knelt down, and softly kissed her,
And he raised his pale, proud face, and cried: “She is not dead. She lives!
“O she lives, I say, and I here,
I am come to fight and die here
For the love my heart has for her like a slow consuming fire;
For the love of her low lying,
For the hatred deep, undying
Of the robber lords who struck and stabbed and trod her in the mire!”
Then upon that cry bewildering,
Some of them, her hapless children—
In their hearts there leaped up hope like light when night gives birth to day;
And, as mocks and threats defied him,
One by one they came beside him,
Till they stood, a band of heroes, sombre, desperate, at bay!
And the battle that they fought there,
And the bitter truth they taught there
To the blinded Sister-Nation suffering grievously alway,
All the wrong and rapine past hers,
Of her lords and her task masters,
Is not this the larger hope of all as night gives birth to day!
For the lords and liars are quaking
At the People’s stern awaking
From their slumber of the ages; and the Peoples slowly rise,
And with hands locked tight together,
One in heart and soul for ever,
Watch the sun of Light and Liberty leap up into the skies!
That’s the story, that’s the story
With a nobler praise than “glory,”
Of the Man who loved the right like heaven and loathed the wrong like hell,
And with calm, proud exultation
Bade her stand at last a nation,
Ireland, Ireland that is one name with the name of Charles Parnell!
AT THE INDIA DOCKS.
A Memory of August, 1883.
[The spectacle of the life of the London Dock labourers is one of the most terrible examples of the logical outcome of the present social system. In the six great metropolitan docks over 100,000 men are employed, the great bulk of whom are married and have families. By the elaborate system of sub-contracts their wages have been driven down to 4d., 3d., and even 2d. for the few hours they are employed, making the average weekly earnings of a man amount to 7, 6, and even 5 shillings a week! Hundreds and hundreds of lives are lost or ruined every year by the perilous nature of the work, and absolutely without compensation. Yet so fierce is the competition that men are not unfrequently maimed or even killed in the desperate struggles at the gates for the tickets of employment, guaranteeing a “pay” which often does not amount to more than a few pence! The streets and houses inhabited by this unfortunate class are of the lowest kind—haunts of vice, disease, and death, and the monopolistic companies are thus directly able to profit by their wholesale demoralization by ruthlessly crushing out, through the contractors, all efforts at organisation on the part of the men. To see these immense docks, the home of that more immense machine, British Commerce, crowded with huge and stately ships, steamers, and sailors the first in the world, and to watch with intelligent eyes by what means the colossal work of loading and unloading them is carried out; this is to face a sacrificial orgy of human life—childhood, youth, manhood, womanhood, and age, with everything that makes them beautiful and ennobling, and not merely a misery and a curse—far more appalling than any Juggernaut progress or the human holocausts that were offered up to Moloch.]