Page:The city of dreadful night - and other poems (IA cityofdreadfulni00thomrich).pdf/157

 The more of the debt we pay, The less on our sons shall weigh: This star through the baleful rack of the cope Burns red; red is our hope.

O our Mother, thou art noble and fair! Fair and proud and chaste, thou Queen! Chained and stabbed in the breast, Thy throat with a foul clutch prest; Yet around thee how coarse, how mean, Are these rich shopwives who stare!

Art thou moaning, O our Mother, through the swoon Of thine agony of desolation?— "Do my sons still love me? or can they stand Gazing afar from a foreign land, Loving more peace and gold—the boon Of a people strange, of a sordid nation?"

O our Mother, moan not thus! We love you as you love us, And our hearts are wild with thy sorrow: If we cannot save thee, we are blest Who can die on thy sacred bleeding breast.— So we left Smith-Land on the morrow, And we hasten across the West.