THE QUESTION

Shall England consummate the crime

That binds the murderer's hand, and leaves

No surety for the trust of thieves?

Time pleads against it — truth and time —

And pity frowns and grieves.

The hoary henchman of the gang

Lifts hands that never dew nor rain

May cleanse from Gordon's blood again,

Appealing: pity's tenderest pang

Thrills his pure heart with pain.

Grand helmsman of the clamorous crew,

The good grey recreant quakes and weeps

To think that crime no longer creeps

Safe toward its end: that murderers too

May die when mercy sleeps.

While all the lives were innocent

That slaughter drank, and laughed with rage,

Bland virtue sighed, “A former age

Taught murder: souls long discontent

Can aught save blood assuage?

“You blame not Russian hands that smite

By fierce and secret ways the power

That leaves not life one chainless hour;

Have these than they less natural right

To claim life's natural dower?

“The dower that freedom brings the slave

She weds, is vengeance: why should we,

Whom equal laws acclaim as free,

Think shame, if men too blindly brave

Steal, murder, skulk, and flee?

“At kings they strike in Russia: there

Men take their life in hand who slay

Kings: these, that have not heart to lay

Hand save on girls whose ravaged hair

Is made the patriot's prey,

“These, whom the sight of old men slain

Makes bold to bid their children die,

Starved, if they hold not peace, nor lie,

Claim loftier praise: could others deign

To stand in shame so high?

“Could others deign to dare such deeds

As holiest Ireland hallows? Nay,

But justice then makes plain our way:

Be laws burnt up like burning weeds

That vex the face of day.

“Shall bloodmongers be held of us

Blood-guilty? Hands reached out for gold

Whereon blood rusts not yet, we hold

Bloodless and blameless: ever thus

Have good men held of old.

“Fair Freedom, fledged and imped with lies,

Takes flight by night where murder lurks,

And broods on murderous ways and works,

Yet seems not hideous in our eyes

As Austrians or as Turks.

“Be it ours to undo a woful past,

To bid the bells of concord chime,

To break the bonds of suffering crime,

Slack now, that some would make more fast:

Such teaching comes of time.”

So pleads the gentlest heart that lives,

Whose pity, pitiless for all

Whom darkling terror holds in thrall,

Toward none save miscreants yearns, and gives

Alms of warm tears — and gall.

Hear, England, and obey: for he

Who claims thy trust again to-day

Is he who left thy sons a prey

To shame whence only death sets free:

Hear, England, and obey.

Thy spoils he gave to deck the Dutch;

Thy noblest pride, most pure, most brave,

To death forlorn and sure he gave;

Nor now requires he overmuch

Who bids thee dig thy grave.

Dig deep the grave of shame, wherein

Thy fame, thy commonweal, must lie;

Put thought of aught save terror by;

To strike and slay the slayer is sin;

And Murder must not die.

Bind fast the true man; loose the thief;

Shamed were the land, the laws accursed,

Were guilt, not innocence, amerced;

And dark the wrong and sore the grief,

Were tyrants too coerced.

The fiercest cowards that ever skulked,

The cowardliest hounds that ever lapped

Blood, if their horde be tracked and trapped,

And justice claim their lives for mulct,

Gnash teeth that flashed and snapped.

Bow down for fear, then, England: bow,

Lest worse befall thee yet; and swear

That nought save pity, conscience, care

For truth and mercy, moves thee now

To call foul falsehood fair.

So shalt thou live in shame, and hear

The lips of all men laugh thee dead;

The wide world's mockery round thy head

Shriek like a storm-wind: and a bier

Shall be thine honour's bed.