Page:The Statues in the Block and Other Poems (1881).djvu/105



HE sun rose o'er dark Fremantle, And the Sentry stood on the wall; Above him, with white lines swinging, The flag-staff, bare and tall: The flag at its foot—the Mutiny Flag— Was always fast to the line,— For its sanguine field was a cry of fear, And the Colony counted an hour a year In the need of the blood-red sign.

The staff and the line, with its ruddy flash, Like a threat or an evil-bode, Were a monstrous whip with a crimson lash, Fit sign for the penal code.