RECUSANTS AND STANDARD-BEARERS

[August 1914-1919]

WHY ask to know what date, what clime?

There dwelt our own humanity,

Power-worshippers from earliest time,
Feet-kissers of triumphant crime,
Crushers of helpless misery,
Crushing down Justice, honouring wrong,
If that be feeble, this be strong.

Shedders of blood, shedders of tears,
Fell creatures avid of distress;
Yet mocking heaven with senseless prayers
For mercy on the merciless.

It was the autumn of the year
When grain grows yellow in the ear;
Day after day, from noon to noon,
That August's sun blazed bright as June.

But we with unregarding eyes

Saw panting earth and glowing skies.
No hand the reaper's sickle held,

Nor bound the bright sheaves in the field.

Our corn was garnered months before,
Threshed out and harvested with gore;
Ground when the ears were milky sweet
With furious toil of hoofs and feet;
I, doubly cursed, on foreign sod,
Fought neither for my home nor God.

EMILY BRONTË.

ΧΙ

LIBERTY AND THE

NATIONS

O ye loud waves! and O ye forests high!

And O ye clouds that far above me soared!
Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing sky!
Yea, every thing that is and will be free!
Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be,
With what deep worship I have still adored
The spirit of divinest Liberty.

The breath of Liberty, like the word of the holy man, not die with the prophet but will survive him

He is the freeman whom the truth makes free.

will

Why am I a Liberal? WHY? Because all I haply can and do,

All that I am now, all I hope to be,—
Whence comes it save from fortune setting free
Body and soul one purpose to pursue,
God traced for both? If fetters, not a few,
Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,
These shall I bid men—each in his degree
Also God-guided-bear, and gaily, too?
But little do or can the best of us;

That little is achieved through Liberty.
Who then, dares hold-emancipated thus-
His fellow shall continue bound?
Who live, love, labour freely, nor discuss

Not I,

A brother's right to freedom. That is 'why'.
ROBERT BROWNING.

Greece

ITHIN the circuit of this pendent orb

WITH

There lies an antique region, on which fell The dews of thought in the world's golden dawn Earliest and most benign, and from it sprung Temples and cities and immortal forms

And harmonies of wisdom and of song,

And thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts so fair, And when the sun of its dominion failed,

And when the winter of its glory came,

The winds that stripped it bare blew on and swept

That dew into the utmost wildernesses

In wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawed

The unmaternal bosom of the North.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.