Lord Leitrim.

My Lord, at last you have it! Now we know
Truth's not a phrase, justice an idle show.
Your life ran red with murder, green with lust.
Blood has washed blood clean, and, in the final dust
Your carrion will be purified. Yet, see,
Though your body perish, for your soul shall be
An immortality of infamy!

Francis William Lauderdale Adams

Francis William Lauderdale Adams (27 September 1862 – 4 September 1893) was an English writer, poet, dramatist, and social reformer. His literary work often reflected his radical socialist views. Adams lived a life marred by poverty and struggles with his health, eventually committing suicide at the age of 30. Despite his brief life, his contributions to literature and social thought remain significant.

Francis William Lauderdale Adams

To Queen Victoria In England. An Address On Her Jubilee Year.

Francis William Lauderdale Adams, Simple Poetry

Parallels For The Pious.

Francis William Lauderdale Adams, Simple Poetry

To Henry George In America.

Francis William Lauderdale Adams, Simple Poetry

Jesus.

Francis William Lauderdale Adams, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

An "Assassin."

. . . They caught them at the bend. He and his son
Sat in the car, revolvers in their laps.
From either side the stone-walled wintry road
There flashed thin fire-streaks in the rainy dusk.
The father swayed and fell, shot through the chest.
The son was up, but one more fire-streak leaped
Close from the pitch-black of a thick-set bush
Not five yards from him, and lit all the face
Of him whose sweetheart walked the Dublin streets
For lust of him who gave one yell and fell
Flat on the stony road, a sweltering corse.
Then they came out, the men who did this thing,
And looked upon their hatred's retribution,
While heedlessly the rattling car fled on.
Grey-haired old wolf, your letch for peasants' blood,
For peasants' sweat turned gold and silver and bronze,
Is done...

Francis William Lauderdale Adams

In The Street. Lord - - .

You have done well, we say it. You are dead,
    And, of the man that with the right hand takes
Less than the left hand gives, let it be said
    He has done something for our wretched sakes.
For those to whom you gave their daily bread
    Rancid with God-loathed "charity," their drink
Putrid with man-loathed "sin," we bow our head
    Grateful, as the great hearse goes by, and think.
Yes, you have fed the flesh and starved the soul
    Of thousands of us; you have taught too well
The rich are little gods beyond control,
    Save of your big God of the heaven and hell.
We thank you. This was pretty once, and right.
Now it wears rather thin. My lord, good night!

Francis William Lauderdale Adams

To England.

I.


There was a time when all thy sons were proud
    To speak thy name,
England, when Europe echoed back aloud
    Thy fearless fame:

When Spain reeled shattered helpless from thy guns
    And splendid ire,
When from Canadian snows to Indian suns
    Pitt's soul was fire.

O that in days like these were, fair and free
    From shame and scorn,
Fate had allowed, benignly, pityingly
    That I was born!

O that, if struck, then struck with glorious wounds,
    I bore apart
(Not torn with fangs of leprous coward hounds)
    My bleeding heart!


II.


We hate you - not because of cruel deeds
    Staining a glorious effort. They who live
    Learn in this earth to give and to forgive,
Where he...

Francis William Lauderdale Adams

Dirge. (Brisbane.) "A Little Soldier Of The Army Of The Night."

Bury him without a word!
    No appeal to death;
Only the call of the bird
    And the blind spring's breath.

Nature slays ten, yet the one
    Reaches but to a part
Of what's to be done, to be sung.
    Keep we a proud heart!

Let us not glose her waste
    With lies and dreams;
Fawn on her wanton haste,
    Say it but seems.

Comrades, with faces unstirred,
    Scorning grief's dole,
Though with him, with him lies interred
    Our heart and soul,

Bury him without a word!
    No appeal to death;
Only the call of the bird
    And the blind spring's breath.

Francis William Lauderdale Adams

Algernon Charles Swinburne.

Shrieks out of smoke, a flame of dung-straw fire
    That is not quenched but hath for only fruit
    What writhes and dies not in its rotten root:
Two things made flesh, the visible desire
To match in filth the skunk, the ape in ire, {87a}
    Mouthing before the mirrors with wild foot
    Beyond all feebler footprint of pursuit,
The perfect twanger of the Chinese lyre!
A heart with generous virtues run to seed
In vices making all a jumbled creed:
    A soul that knows not love nor trust nor shame,
But cuts itself with knives to bawl and bleed -
    If thou we've known of late, art still the same,
    What need, O soul, to sign thee with thy name?

Once on thy lips the golden-honeyed bees
    Settling made sweet the heart that was not strong,
    And sky...

Francis William Lauderdale Adams

Mount Rennie. (The Time-Spirit speaks.)

"Poor lads! And you for others' wrongs and sins
Whose dead past greed and lust did never wince
    To make your fathers, mothers, and now you
Miserable fiends in hell, must expiate, since

    "We the more guilty, we the strong, the few,
    Whose triumph thrusts you down into the stew,
Fear lest our victims rise and rend us, fear
    This problem mad we will not listen to!

"Victims, with her your fellow-victim here,
Blind, deaf, dumb beasts, the hour shall yet appear
    When men, when justicers resolute-terrible, you
Shall speak and all men tremble as they hear!"

Francis William Lauderdale Adams