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| HARK! Young Democracy from sleep | |
| Our careless sentries raps: | |
| A backwash from the Future’s deep | |
| Our Evil’s foreland laps. | |
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| Unknown, these Titans of our Night | 5 |
| Their New Creation make: | |
| Unseen, they toil and love and fight | |
| That glamoured Man may wake. | |
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| Knights-errant of the human race, | |
| The Quixotes of to-day, | 10 |
| For man as man they claim a place, | |
| Prepare the tedious way. | |
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| They seek no dim-eyed mob’s applause, | |
| Deem base the titled name, | |
| And spurn, for glory of their Cause, | 15 |
| The tawdry nymphs of Fame. | |
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| No masks of ignorance or sin | |
| Hide from them you or me: | |
| We’re Man—no colour shames our skin, | |
| No race or caste have we. | 20 |
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| The prognathous Neanderthal, | |
| To them, conceals the Bruce; | |
| They see Dan Aesop in the thrall; | |
| From swagmen Christ deduce. | |
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| Tho’ butt for lecher’s ribaldry | 25 |
| And scarred by woman’s scorn, | |
| In baby-burdened girl they see | |
| God-motherhood forlorn. | |
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| With them, to racial siredom glides | |
| The savage we deprave; | 30 |
| That eunuch brilliant Narses hides: | |
| A Spartacus, that slave. | |
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| They Jesus find in manger waif; | |
| In horse-boys Shakespearehood: | |
| And earthquake-Luthers nestling safe | 35 |
| In German miner’s brood. | |
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| The God that pulses everywhere | |
| They know fills Satan’s veins; | |
| No felon but they see Him there | |
| Behind His mirror’s stains. | 40 |
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| ’Tis theirs Earth’s charnel rooms to clear, | |
| And ruthless sweep away | |
| The Lares and Penates dear | |
| To man in his decay. | |
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| Their restless energy supplies | 45 |
| Munitions that will wreck | |
| The keeps whence feudal enemies | |
| Our free banditti check. | |
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| Their unrelenting wars they wage, | |
| These Furies of the Right, | 50 |
| Where myriad Falsehood’s legions rage, | |
| Artilleried by Might; | |
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| Where Fashion’s stupid iron clamps | |
| Young Innovation’s head, | |
| And Law the stalwart Present cramps | 55 |
| In Past’s Procrustes-bed; | |
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| Where Pride of learning, substance, blood, | |
| Or prowess in the strife, | |
| Exacts from teeming lowlihood | |
| The lion’s share of life; | 60 |
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| Where Gluttony would to the brutes | |
| Degrade his loose-lipped gangs; | |
| Where Tyranny his venom shoots | |
| From one or million fangs; | |
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| Where Cruelty, in Wisdom’s mask, | 65 |
| Piths fame from writhing beasts; | |
| Where blest is racial Murder’s task | |
| By Christ’s apostate priests. | |
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| In Punic or in Persian fray | |
| With Love’s and Conscience’ foes, | 70 |
| Unadvertising Romans they, | |
| And Spartans free from pose. | |
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| Abused as mad or traitors by | |
| The trolls they would eject; | |
| Cold-shouldered by wan Apathy; | 75 |
| Of motives mean suspect; | |
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| Outcast from social gaieties; | |
| Denied life’s lilied grace; | |
| They mount their hidden Calvaries | |
| To save the human race. | 80 |
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| The bowers of Art a few may know; | |
| A few wait highly placed: | |
| Most bear the hods of common woe, | |
| And some you call disgraced. | |
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| But whether in the mob or school, | 85 |
| In church or poverty, | |
| They teach and live the Golden Rule | |
| Of Young Democracy:— | |
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| ‘That culture, joy and goodliness | |
| Be th’ equal right of all: | 90 |
| That Greed no more shall those oppress | |
| Who by the wayside fall: | |
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| ‘That each shall share what all men sow: | |
| That colour, caste’s a lie: | |
| That man is God, however low— | 95 |
| Is man, however high.’ | |
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