EMPEROR AND PROLETARIAN
On dreary wooden benches, in low- ceiled tavern squalid,
Where day but palely falters, through
smoke- bemurked glass,
Beside long cheerless tables, with
sullen looks and pallid,
A group of outcast wanderers forlornly
there hath tarried;
The poor and sceptic children of
proletarian class.
Dost say man shines effulgent, quoth one with cynic sneer,
In this dark world of hardship, of
bitterness and pain?
No spark in him appeareth of candid
light and clear;
His ray is dull and clouded, like this
be- mudded sphere,
Whereon he ruleth sovereign,
unchallenged in his reign.
What's justice? See the mighty, behind their fortune's shielding,
Erect their laws and edicts, to serve
them as afoil,
Against ye ever plotting, with wealth
stolen from your yielding,
Whom they to labour sentence, by
boundless powers they're wielding
And hold in subjugtion your lives of
ceaseless toil.
With sated langour gorge they the sweets their lives o'ercumber,
Bright hours upon them smiling, their
day in dalliance flies;
In winter, 'mind green gardens, they
quaff the wine's rich amber,
In heat of summer sweltering' mid
Alpine peaks they clamber,
And night to morn transforming, they
close day's sleepy eyes.
For them what folk call virtue exists not; yet vicarious,
To ye, they falsely preach it; your
doughty brawn and sweat
Their lumbering States are needing, for
their expansion glorious;
Their fiery wars need fighting, that
they may rise victorious;
That by your bloody slaughter your
rulers may be great.
Their navies flaunting proudly, and armies high- belauded,
The crowns, by reigning monarchs, on
haughty foreheads borne,
Those millions piled on millions, in
lavish heaps, safe- hoarded,
Rich vampires are amassing, depress the
poor, defrauded,
And from o' er- burdened toiling of
weary mobs are drawn.
Religion- 'tis but phrasing, created for your deceiving,
That by its lure enthralling, your
yoked necks ye' ll bow;
For held the heart no vision of
recompense relieving,
After your bitter labours and life of
constant grieving,
Would ye the curse still carry, like
oxen at the plough?
With shadows vague and formless your sight they have extinguished;
By faith in last requital, mendaciously
have led;
Ah, no; when life lies dying, all joy
must be relinquished;
To whom this world naught gifted, save
sorrow, sore and anguished
Gains no redress post- mortal; for they
who die are dead.
Vain lies, empty phrases alone the States sustaining;
Pretence that destined order they
cunningly portray;
To make ye strong defenders, their
wealth and power maintaining,
In armed ranks conscribing, by
discipine constraining;
To fight your very brothers, they drive
ye to the fray.
Unto malignant millions why are ye subjugated;
Ye that a mere subsistence scarce wring
from ceaseless toil?
To early death and wastage why are ye
dedicated,
Whilst they in easeful comfort have aye
luxuriated;
Scarce time amid their feasting to cast
the mortal coil?
Bethink thee; power and numbers are yours for liberation!
It needs but that ye will it, to part
the soil by might.
Build no more walls and ramparts to
serve wealth' s preservation;
Or make for ye a prison, when, by
desperation,
Ye fancy to life' s bounty, ye also
have the right.
By their own laws encompassed, they take their fill of treasure,
An drain earth' s sweetest juices, till
sweets, from surfeit, cloy,
Calling in gay carousals and revel-
sated leisure,
For your fair daughters virgin, as
tools to serve their pleasure;
Their foul lascivious ancients our
lovely youth destroy.
Know ye what bitter portion to ye is harshly fated?
Hard toil, wherefrom their riches they
draw unto excess,
Black bread your tears have moistened,
a life of serfdom hated,
Your maidens smirched and shameful,
their happiness frustrated;
The heaven unto the mighty; to ye, the
bitter mess!
Rich men require no statutes, for virtue grows concurrent
When every want is furnished; for ye
the lawyer' s screed;
For ye the regulations, and punishments
deterrent,
When forth your hands are reaching, for
like' s good gifts aspirant;
Exists there no forgiveness, e' en for your
direst need.
Crush down the social order, accursed and unfair,
That 'twixt the poor wealthy our human
kind dives
Since after death remaineth no hope to
make repair,
On this old earthly planet let each
with other share;
Be like a band of brothers that equally
abides.
The naked antique Venus shatter to swift destruction!
Oh, fling in ruthless fury, unto the
fire' s fierce jaws,
Pictures of snow- nude bodies that wake
the vain conception,
Sadly the heart disturbing, of ultimate
perfection,
Working our maidens' downfall to lust'
s destroying claws!
Demolish all, unsparing, that pruriency engender;
Raze palaces and temples that crimes
from light defend;
Statues of lord and tryant to molten
lava render;
Wash out the servile footprints of they
who basely pander,
Fawing behind the mighty unto the wide
world' s end.
Yea, shiver unto atoms all pomp and ostentation,
And from its granite clothing our human
life disrobe;
Cast off its gold an purple, its grief
and nauseation;
Make life a dream unfathomed, a vision'
s emanation
That moveth to eternity exempt from
passions' s probe.
Build pyramids gigantic from out the desolation
As a memento mori from history to
arise;
This is the art shall waken your minds
in exaltation
To face the great eternal; not whoring
degradation,
With mocking sneers grimacing; with
vile and furtive eyes.
Oh, bring ye down the deluge; too long indeed ye waited
To see what goodlyoutcome would patient
goodness get;
Came nothing . . . ! The hyena by
chatterers was replaced;
Unto the ancient cruelty was clemency
translated;
Only the form is altered; remains the
evil yet.
Ye' ll turn then to the era of gold without alloying,
Whereof the far blue legends oft
whisper to our sense;
Where free and equal pleasure all equal
are enjoing;
When to life' s transient flicker Death
comes at last, destroying,
Twill seem to ye an angel with tresses
fair and dense.
Then shall ye die, untroubled by love or sorrow' s savour;
As on this planet ye have lived, your
offspring shall succeed:
The death bell cease bewailing,
with iron- tongued clangour,
Folk, to whom e' en old fortune, hath
shown her tender favour;
None shall have cause for mourning the
dead who lived indeed.
The pestilent diseases of poverty' s dire paining,
And eke of wealth abnormal, shall
scourge not as of yore,
And they whose growth is destined shall
grow without restraining;
Until men will to break it, the cup
they' ll still be draining;
For none shall ever perish, till life
can give no more.
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Beside the old Seine' s waters, with pallid looks and sombrous,
In choach of gala splendour, the mighty
Caesar passed;
His brooding not distracted by
thundrous waves upcast,
Nor yet by stony rumbling of
equipages ponderous;
In presence of his people, grown silent
and abashed.
With ready smile and subtle, and piercing glances scornful
Probing the mind' s recesses where
secret thoughts abide;
With raised hand controlling a world in
pomp and pride
He greets upon his passage the ragged
crowd and mournful,
Whereto his mighty grandour
mysteriously is tied.
All loveless and unfriended, in lonely elevation,
Like ye, is he persuaded that malice
and untruth
To human nature' s bridle alone give
orientation;
And thus the scroll of history will
wind through time' s duration:
The hammer on the anvil- a tale that
knows no ruth.
And he, the haughty summit of great oppressors blatant,
Saluteth in passing his mute defender.
Know;
If from the world wert absent, thou,
the dark cause and latent
Of mighty overthrowing, in grandeur,
high and patent,
The Caesar, aye the Caesar, long since
had fallen low.
Your shades, with savage outrage, that conquer kind confiding;
Your pitiless, cold smiling, no mercy
can convoke;
Your bitter mind all justice, as vain
pretence, deriding;
Dread powers, ' tis by your shadows,
your shadows dark misguiding,
He drives the poor and hostile to toil
beneath his yoke.
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Paris in flames is seething, wherein the storm is bathing,
And towers, like inky torches, flare
crashing to their doom.
Through fiery tongues devouring, that
rend in waves the gloom
Great cries and clash of weapons sound
from that ocean blanzing:
An epoch on its death- bed, with Paris
for its tomb.
Dark streets in conflagration flash glares that daze the vision;
A- top the barricading of heaped- up
granite mounds,
To bloody confict moving, the
proletarian legion;
Its pikes and muskets gleaming, and
capped with bonnets Phrygian.
The belfreis' clangour deafens, with
hoarse discordant sounds.
Their arms with weapons landen, passing through vapours lurid,
The women of the people, with gorgeous
raven hair
Veiling their tender bosoms; impassible
and frigid,
Pallid and cold as marble; the fire of
rage and hatred
Fierce in their black eyes burning;
their eyes of deep despair.
Oh! lanch thee in the struggle, wrapped in thy splendid tresses!
To- day reveals heroic the poor
abandoned child.
Aloft the scarlet standard, with common
justice blesses.
Hallows thy life besmirched, thy sins
and foul excesses;
Ah, no, not thine, the stigma; but
theirs who thee defiled!
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Glistens the tranquil ocean; its plates of gleaming crystal
Move each upon each other, in following
sheets of grey.
O' er the mysterious forest with
trackless groves sepulchral,
Their dark recesses flooding; in azure
fields celestial,
Large- faced, the full moon riseth,
with proud triumphal eye.
In gentle rocking motion, on billows quietly flowing,
With battered wooden bare- bones, go
vessels gaunt and old,
In grey and silent passing, like eerie
specters showing;
The moon their bellied canvas is
piercing with its glowing;
It lingers as a token, a disk of fiery
gold.
Beside the shore eroded, and worn with waves' emotion,
The Caesar keeps his vigil, where bent
unto the ground,
Mournful the willow weepeth. Wide
reaches of the ocean,
In fleet as lightning circles, all
humbly make submission
To night' s sweet silken breezes, and
heave with cadent sound.
Amid the sikes be- starred, to him a vision wended,
Treading the time- worn forests and
splendid waters clear,
Hoar locks and brows be- darkened by
sorrow' s night, descended;
The crown of straw hangs piteous, that
idile winds have rended;
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. The ancient man, King Lear.
With mute amaze, he watches the figment of could shadows,
Betwixt the trcery, that fair stars
quivering pierce.
A host of chaning phantoms across his
mind swift follows;
Visions of wealth and radiance-
scattered by stormy echoes;
The voices of the people; a world of
sorrow fierce.
In every man is bosomed a world of dear endeavour,
Old Demiurgus vainly, but ceaseless,
striving yet:
In every mind existing, the world demandeth
ever
Whence hath it come, and wherefore it
goeth hence, and whither;
The flower of strange desiring, in
chaos that was set.
The yearning for perfection: the universal essence,
Immutable it lurketh within the hearts
of all;
'Tis sown at large by hazard; the tree
in full florescence
Yet ere buds are fruited, the greater
part will fall.
Thus frozen in its ripening, the human fruit grows rigid:
One to a slave; the other to emperor
concealed,
Covering with tinselled follies his
feeble life and arid;
Unto the sun revealing his face,
forlorn and wretched;
His face, for in each bosom the same
deep self' s conceald.
The same desires resurgent- new habits yet enclosing,
For aye, the human fabric remaineth
changeless still;
The world' s malignant mystery in many
shapes reposing;
To none the all- deceiver its secret
strange disclosing,
With longing for the infinite the atom
doth instil.
And
when ye know this semblance will cease with your expiring,
And after ye, unchanged, dure all ye
strove to mend,
This hasting here and thither, in
anxious hope, aspiring
Fills with fatigued langour; one sole
thought proves alluring:
" This world of life is merely a
dream of Death eternal."
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