But like a shadow shall its wonder chill:
So even here: it left more pinched the low brow there,
Yet, as if sorry even for unrighteous will,
Made still, for ruth, the base ridge wear,
At upward blazon ’tward yon veiled Deeps,
Where the lights ensky them past the zenith star,
A blot—a bruise, whose fiery throb no opiate sleeps,
A branding, brazen, yet a piteous scar;
Which, in his better hour, he, the ogre, Greed,
Applying to its sorry wound the comfort of the salve,
Which ’gainst Time’s woe, for even him, the high Hopes breed,
Allays that brutal sting—his love of Rule and lust of Have.
But out, alas! When sad companion of the fated Night,
Whence, struggling tho’ her bitter spur, his dark will came,
He aims to conjure with yon gentler Light,
To screen his knavish Cant, filch Glory’s name;
When cloaked in practise, till the Heavens doubt,
False hopes estrange him with his franker star;
How vengeful then, how giant grim, stands fiery out
Yon thievish, brazen, branding Scar!
TO ENGLAND: A FORECAST.
(With a side-light on Kipling’s verse “The Islanders.”)
“Those flanneled fools at the wicket,
Those muddied Oafs at the goal.”
Oh yes, make no doubt,—you shall need them;
If not now, at some near-upon time,
P’rhaps fast as your mothers dare breed them,
Those fools of his militant rhyme.
For, tho’ it be not a day that covers
What stern Reckoners, withal, must try,
And, ere Retribution that hovers
Shall swoop down on the Greed and the lie;
Yet, sure as red War do thin them,
Your brave ranks dished cold on his tray,
Shall your wits study hard how to win them—
Adding craft to his ravenous play—
Those flanneled fools where they dally,
With yet good trick o’ the human left,
Who trace, thro’ the bounce and the rally,
The gross hand of the clumsiest theft;