Since from down-trodden bondsmen of all castes and all nations,
Flicker the first torches of humanity,
Even as from amid the barbarians impaled upon stakes by Nero,
Blazed forth the lustre of Christendom!
Over your grave, that our grandsons shall forget not,
They will glitter, torches ablaze, unto your sightless eyes,
And will lay bare your words, wherein is sealed the downfall of your race;
—But ere that, I, with the retaliation of disdain
Welling up from the sorrowful soil of this cowering age,
Advance to the rim of your grave,
And fling it upon you, despotical dotard,
That with this grinding reproach you may be burdened eternally, eternally. . .
(1897).
5. THE RIVER.
It was like to a child,—slender the springlet
Glistening among the coarse-grained sand—
In gigantic, unpeopled stillness
Old Earth brought it forth
Under the trees coloured with mistletoe,
Under twilit depths of shaggy firs,
In gigantic stillness it sang through the grass
From serried wedges of lime-stone rocks.
