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| THE SUNNY rounds of Earth contain | |
| An obverse to its Day, | |
| Our fertile Vagrancy’s domain, | |
| Wan Proletaria. | |
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| From pole to pole of Poverty | 5 |
| We stumble through the years, | |
| With hazy-lanterned Memory | |
| And Hope that never nears. | |
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| Wherever Plenty’s crop invites | |
| Our pitiful brigades, | 10 |
| Lurk cannoneers of Vested Rights, | |
| Juristic ambuscades; | |
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| And here hangs Rent, that squalid cage | |
| Within which Mammon thrusts, | |
| Bound with the fetter of a wage, | 15 |
| The helots of his lusts. | |
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| With palsied Doubt as guide, we wind | |
| Among the lanes of Need, | |
| Where meagre Hungers scouting find | |
| But slavered baits of Greed. | 20 |
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| The wet-lipped Lamias of Caste, | |
| Awaiting our advance, | |
| Our choicest squadrons’ fealty blast | |
| With magic smile and glance: | |
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| Delilah-limbed temptations flit | 25 |
| Among our drowsy rows, | |
| And on our willing captains fit | |
| The badges of our foes. | |
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| What wonder sometimes if in stealth | |
| Our starker outposts wait, | 30 |
| And, in the prowling eyes of Wealth, | |
| Dash vitriol of Hate; | |
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| Or if our Samsons, ere too late, | |
| Their treasons should make good | |
| By whelming in the temple’s fate | 35 |
| Their viper owners’ brood! | |
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| Our polyandrous dam has borne | |
| To Satan and to God | |
| The hordes of Night, the clans of Morn, | |
| That through our valleys plod. | 40 |
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| Ah, motherhood of misery | |
| For Christ-child as for pest! | |
| The greater her fertility | |
| The drier grows her breast! | |
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| Too many linger on the track; | 45 |
| A few outstrip the time: | |
| Some, God has tattooed yellow, black, | |
| And some disguised with crime. | |
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| Art’s living archives here abound, | |
| Carraras of Despair, | 50 |
| And those weird masks of Sight and Sound | |
| The Tragic Muses wear. | |
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| Tho’ blind and dull, ’tis we supply | |
| The Painter’s dazzling dreams; | |
| The rolling flood of Poetry | 55 |
| From our dumb chaos streams. | |
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| Nay, when your world is over-tired, | |
| And Genius comatose, | |
| Our race, by Nemesis inspired, | |
| Old Order overthrows: | 60 |
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| With earthquake-life we thrill your land, | |
| Refill the cruse of Art, | |
| Revitalize spent Wisdom, and— | |
| Resume our weary part. | |
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| The palace of successful Guilt | 65 |
| Is mortared with our shame; | |
| On hecatombs of Us are built | |
| The soaring towers of Fame. | |
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| We are the gnomes of Titan works | |
| Whose throbbings never cease; | 70 |
| Our unregarded signet lurks | |
| On every masterpiece. | |
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| The floating isles, that shuttling tie | |
| All peoples into one | |
| By adept steermen’s sorcery | 75 |
| Of magnet, steam, and sun; | |
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| Religion’s dolmens, Sphinxes, spires, | |
| Her Biblic armouries; | |
| The helot lightning of the wires | |
| That mesh your lands and seas; | 80 |
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| The viaducts ’tween Near and Far, | |
| Whereon, o’er range and mead, | |
| Bacchantic Trade’s triumphant car | |
| And iron tigers speed; | |
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| The modern steely crops that rise | 85 |
| Where technic Jasons sow: | |
| —All these but feebly symbolize | |
| The largesse we bestow. | |
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| And our reward? In this wan land, | |
| In clientage of Greed, | 90 |
| Despised, polluted, maimed and banned, | |
| To wander and—to breed. | |
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