Then (I know not how, but so it was) in a moment the flash of an eye—
A murmur ran and rose to a voice, and the voice to a terrible cry:
“Enough, enough! It has had enough! We will march no more till we drop
In the furnace Pit. Give us food! Give us rest! Though the accursed Machinery stop!”
And then, with a shout of angry fear, the Revellers sprang to their feet,
And the call was for cannon and cavalry, for rifle and bayonet.
And one rose up, a leader of them, lifting a threatening rod.
And “Stop the Machinery!” he yelled, “you might as well stop God!”
But the terrible thunder-cry replied: “If this indeed must be,
It is you should be cast to the furnace Pit to feed the Machine—not we!”
And the central Wheel enormous slowed down in groaning plight,
And all the ærial movement ceased of the shafts and wheels of might,
And a superhuman clamour leaped madly to where overhead
The great Globe swung in the gathering gloom, portentous, huge, blood-red!
But my brain whirled round and my blinded eyes no more could see or know,
Till I struggling seemed to awake at last by the swollen, sullen flow
Of the dreadful river that rolls her tides through the City of Wealth and Woe!
DIRGE.
(Brisbane.)
“A little Soldier of the Army of the Night.”
Bury him without a word!
No appeal to death;
Only the call of the bird
And the blind spring’s breath.
Nature slays ten, yet the one
Reaches but to a part
Of what’s to be done, to be sung.
Keep we a proud heart!
Let us not glose her waste
With lies and dreams;
Fawn on her wanton haste,
Say it but seems.
Comrades, with faces unstirred,
Scorning grief’s dole,
Though with him, with him lies interred
Our heart and soul,
Bury him without a word!
No appeal to death;
Only the call of the bird
And the blind spring’s breath.