Page:Poems Elgee, 1907.djvu/47

THE EXODUS.

I.
"MILLION A DECADE!" Calmly and cold.
 The units are read by our statesmen sage;
Little they think of a Nation old,
 Fading away from History's page;
  Outcast weeds by a desolate sea—
  Fallen leaves of Humanity.

II.
"A million a decade!"—of human wrecks,
 Corpses lying in fever sheds—
Corpses huddled on foundering decks,
 And shroudless dead on their rocky beds;
  Nerve and muscle, and heart and brain,
  Lost to Ireland—lost in vain.

III.
"A million a decade!" Count ten by ten,
 Column and line of the record fair;
Each unit stands for ten thousand men,
 Staring with blank, dead eye-balls there;
  Strewn like blasted trees on the sod,
  Men that were made in the image of God.

IV.
"A million a decade!"—and nothing done;
 The Cæsars had less to conquer a world;
And the war for the Right not yet begun,
 The banner of Freedom not yet unfurled:
  The soil is fed by the weed that dies;
  If forest leaves fall, yet they fertilise.

V.
But ye—dead, dead, not climbing the height,
 Not clearing a path for the future to tread;
Not opening the golden portals of light,
 Ere the gate was choked by your piled-up dead
  Martyrs ye, yet never a name
  Shines on the golden roll of Fame.