II. “HERE AND THERE.”

“This is the steamer’s pit. The ovens like dragons of fire Glare thro’ their close-lidded eyes With restless hungry desire.

“Down from the tropic night Rushes the funnelled air; Our heads expand and fall in; Our hearts thump huge as despair.

“’Tis we make the bright hot blood Of this throbbing inanimate thing; And our life is no less the fuel Than the coal we shovel and fling.

“And lest of this we be proud Or anything but meek, We are well cursed and paid— Ten shillings a week!”

Round, round, round in its tunnel The shaft turns pitiless strong, While lost souls cry out in the darkness: “How long, O Lord, how long?”

Up from the oven pit, The hell where poor men toil, At the sunset hour he comes Clean-clothed, washed from soil.

On the fo’c’s’le head he kneels, His face to the hallowed West. He prays, and bows and prays. Does he pray for death and rest?

O India, India, O my lovely land— At whose sweet throat the greedy English snake, With fangs and lips that suck and never slake, Clings, while around thee, band by stifling band, The loathsome shape twists, chaining foot and hand— O from this death-swoon must thou never wake, From limbs enfranchised these foul fetters to shake, And, proud among the nations, to rise and stand? Nay, but thine eyes, thine eyes wherein there stays The patience of that august faith that scorns The tinsel creed of Christ, dream still and gaze Where, not within the timeless East and haze, The haunt of that wan moon with fading horns, There breaks the first of Himalayan morns!

There was a time when all thy sons were proud To speak thy name, England, when Europe echoed back aloud Thy fearless fame:

When Spain reeled shattered helpless from thy guns And splendid ire, When from Canadian snows to Indian suns Pitt’s soul was fire.

O that in days like these were, fair and free From shame and scorn, Fate had allowed, benignly, pityingly That I was born!

O that, if struck, then struck with glorious wounds, I bore apart (Not torn with fangs of leprous coward hounds) My bleeding heart!

We hate you—not because of cruel deeds Staining a glorious effort. They who live Learn in this earth to give and to forgive, Where heart and soul are noble and fate’s needs Imperious: No, nor yet that cruel seeds Of power and wrong you’ve sown alternative, We hate you, we your sons who yet believe That truth and justice are not empty creeds! No, but because of greed and golden pay, Wages of sin and death: because you smother Your conscience, making cursèd all the day. Bible in one hand, bludgeon in the other, Cain-like you come upon and slay your brother, And, kneeling down, thank God for it, and pray!

I whom you fed with shame and starved with woe, I wheel above you, Your fatal vulture, for I hate you so, I almost love you!

I smell your ruin out. I light and croak My sombre lore, As swaggering you go by, O heart of oak Rotten to the core!

Look westward! Ireland’s vengeful eyes are cast On freedom won. Look eastward! India stirs from sleep at last. You are undone!

Look southward, where Australia hears your voice, And turns away! O brutal hypocrite, she makes her choice With the rising day!

Foul Esau, you who sold your high birthright For gilded mud, Who did the wrong and, priestlike, called it right, And swindled God!

The hour is gone of insult, pain and patience; The hour is come When they arise, the faithful mightier nations, To drag you down!

England, the land I loved With passionate pride, For hate of whom I live Who for love had died,

Can I, while shines the sun, That hour regain When I again may come to thee And love again?

No, not while that flag Of greed and lust Flaunts in the air, untaught To drag the dust!—

Never, till expiant, I see you kneel, And, brandished, gleams aloft The foeman’s steel!

Ah, then to speed, and laugh, As my heart caught the knife: “Mother, I love you! Here, Here is my life!”

At anchor in that harbour of the island, The Chinese gate, We lay where, terraced under green-clad highland, The sea-town sate.

Ships, steamers, sailors, many a flag and nation, A motley crew, Junks, sampans, all East’s swarming jubilation, I watched and knew.

Then, as I stood, sweet sudden sounds out-swelling On the boon breeze, The church-bells’ chiming echoes rang out, telling Of inland peace.

O English chimes, your music rising and falling I cannot praise, Although to me it come sweet-sad recalling Dear childish days.

Yet, English chimes,—last links of chains that sever, Worn out and done, That land and creed that I have left for ever,— Ring on, ring on!

There is much in this sea-way city I have not met with before, But one or two things I notice That I seem to have known of yore.

In the lovely tropical verdure, In the streets, behold I can The hideous English buildings And the brutal English man!

I stand and watch the soldiers Marching up and down, Above the fresh green cricket-ground Just outside the town.

I stand and watch and wonder When in the English land This poor fool Tommy Atkins Will learn and understand?

Zulus, and Boers, and Arabs, All fighting to be free, Men and women and children, Murdered and maimed has he.

In India and in Ireland He’s held the People down, While the robber English gentleman Took pound and penny and crown.

To make him false to his order, What was it that they gave— To make him his brother’s oppressor? The clothes and pay of a slave!

O thou poor fool, Tommy Atkins, Thou wilt be wise that day When, with eager eyes and clenched teeth, Thou risest up to say:

“This is our well-loved England, And I’ll free it, if I can, From every rotten bourgeois And played-out gentleman!”

There is a valley green that lies ’Mid hills, the summer’s bower. The many coloured butterflies Flutter from flower to flower.

And round one lush green side of it, In gardened homes are laid, With grief and care compassionate, The people of the dead.

There all the voicing summer day They sing, the happy rills. No noisy sound awakes away The echo of the hills.

Up in the misty morning, Up past the gardened hills, With the rhythmic stroke of the rowers, While the blue deep pales and thrills!

Past the rice-fields green low-lying, Where the sea-gull’s winging down From the fleets of junks and sampans And the ancient Chinese Town!

From the bright and blinding sunshine, From the whirling locust’s song, Into the dark and narrow fissures Of the streets I am borne along.

Here and there dusky-beaming A sun-shaft broadens and drops On the brown bare crowd slow-passing The crowd of the open shops.

We move on over the bridges With their straight-hewn blocks of stone. And their quaint grey animal figures, And the booths the hucksters own.

Behind a linen awning Sits an ancient wight half-dead, And a little dear of a girl is Examining—his head.

On a bended bamboo shouldered, Bearing a block of stone, Two worn-out coolies half-naked Utter their grunting groan.

Children, almond-eyed beauties, Impossibly mangy curs, Take part in the motley stream of Insouciant passengers.

This is the dream, the vision That comes to me and greets— The vision of Retribution In the labyrinthine streets!

These Chinese toil and yet they do not starve, And they obey, and yet they are not slaves. It is the “free-born” fuddled Englishmen That grovel rotting in their living graves.

These Chinese do not fawn with servile lips; They lift up equal eyes that ask and scan. Their degradation has escaped at least That choicest curse of all—the gentleman!

“Yes, I used always to think That you Russians knew How to make the good drink As none others do.

“And I thought moreover, (Not with the epicures), You might search the world over For such women as yours.

“In both these matters now I perceive I was right, And I really can’t tell you how Much I delight

“In my third (Thanks, another cup!) Idea of the fun, When your country gets up And follows the sun!

“And just as in Europe, see, There’s a conqueror nation, So why not in Asia be A like jubilation?

“Taught as well as organized, [69b] The eternal Coolie, From being robbed and despised, Takes to cutting throats duly!

“But—please, don’t be flurried; For I daresay by then You’ll be comfortably buried, Ladies and gentlemen!

“No more, thanks! I must be going! I’m so glad to have made this Opportunity of knowing Some more Russian ladies!”

Simple you were, and good. No kindlier heart Beat than the heart within your gentle breast. Labour you had, and happiness, and rest, And were the maid of nations. Now you start To feverish life, feeling the poisonous smart Upon your lips of harlot lips close-pressed, The lips of her who stands among the rest With greasy righteous soul and rotten heart. O sunrise land, O land of gentleness, What madness drives you to lust’s dreadful bed? O thrice accursèd England, wretchedness For ever be on you, of whom ’tis said, Prostitute plague-struck, that you catch and kiss Innocent lives to make them foully dead!

He sits. Upon the kingly head doth rest The round-balled wimple, and the heavy rings Touch on the shoulders where the shadow clings. The downward garment shows the ambiguous breast; The face—that face one scarce can look on lest One learn the secret of unspeakable things; But the dread gaze descends with shudderings, To the veiled couched knees, the hands and thumbs close-pressed. O lidded, downcast eyes that bear the weight Of all our woes and terrible wrong’s increase: Proud nostrils, lips proud-perfecter than these, With what a soul within you do you wait! Disdain and pity, love late-born of hate, Passion eternal, patience, pain and peace!

Where’er I go in this dense East, In sunshine or shade, I retch at the villainous feast That England has made.

And my shame cannot understand, As scorn springs elate, How I ever loved that land That now I hate!

In the dark waveless sea, Deep blue under deep blue, The fisher drifts by on the tide In his small pole-balanced canoe.

Above him the cloud-clapped hills Crown the dense jungly sweeps; The cocoa-nut groves hedge round The hut where the beach-wave sleeps.

Is it not better so To be as this savage is, Than to live the wage-slave’s life Of hopeless agonies?

Aloll in the warm clear water, On her back with languorous limbs, She lies. The baby upon her breasts Paddles and falls and swims.

With half-closed eyes she smiles, Guarding it with her hands; And the sob swells up in my heart— In my heart that understands.

Dear, in the English country, The hatefullest land on earth, The mothers are starved and the children die, And death is better than birth!

I saw them as they were born, Erect and fearless and free, Facing the sun and the wind Of the hills and the sea.

I saw them naked, superb, Like the Greeks long ago, With shield and spear and arrow Ready to strike and throw.

I saw them as they were made By the Christianizing crows, Blinking, stupid, clumsy In their greasy ill-cut clothes:

I heard their gibbering cant, And they sung those hymns that smell Of poor souls besotted, degraded With the fear of “God” and “hell.”

And I thought if Jesus could see them, He who loved the freedom, the light, And loathed those who compassed heaven And earth for one proselyte,

To make him, etcetera, etcetera,— Then this sight, as on me or you, Would act on him like an emetic, And he’d have to go off and spue.

O Jesus, O man of the People, Who died to abolish all this— The pharisee rank and respectable, The scribe and the greedy priest—

O Jesus, O sacred Socialist, You would die again of shame, If you were alive and could see What things are done in your name.

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!

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!

“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!”