adamant,
And made a new world which, renewed again,
Is Europe still.
He is a fool! And it was some such fool
Drudged up and down the earth these later years,
And wrote a Book the other fools bought up
In tens of thousands, calling it a Gospel.
And this fool too, and the fools that follow him,
Or hold with him, why, he and they shall all
End in the mad-house, or the gutter, where
They'll chew the husk of their mad dreams, and die!
For what are their follies but dreams? They have _done_ nothing,
And never will! . . .
One moment! I have just a word to say.
How comes it, tell me, friend, six weeks ago
A 'comp.' was sent a-packing for a cause
His fellows thought unjust, and that same night
(Or, rather, the next morning) in comes one
To tell you (quite politely) that unless
That 'comp.' was setting at his frame, they feared
One of our greatest newspapers would not go
That day a harbinger of light and leading
To gladden and instruct its thousands? And,
If I remember right, it did--and so did he,
That wretched 'comp.,' set at his frame, and does!
How came it also that three months ago
Your brother, the shipowner, "sacked" a man
Out of his ship, and bade him go to hell?
And in the evening up came two or three,
Discreetly asking him to state the cause?
And when he said he'd see them with the other,
(Videlicet, in hell), they said they feared,
Unless the other came thence (if he was there),
And was upon his ship to-morrow morning,
It would not sail. It did not sail till noon,
And he sailed with it!
But this is all beside the point! Our 'comp.,'
Who sweats there, and who will not write you 'leaders'
Except to help a friend who's fallen ill,
Why, he, beyond a doubt he is a fool!"

"MOUNT RENNIE." {95}

I.
(_The Australian Press speaks_).

"Kill them! Yes, hang them all!
They are fiends, just that!
And we're all agreed fiends should be sent
To a place that's hot.

"They were fiends, too, of themselves;
They delighted in it!
It's all their fault, their own fault!
Don't listen a minute!

"Don't let anyone talk
About 'fatality,' 'lot,'
That sort of talk (excuse us!)
Is just damned rot.

"You and I, p'raps, are what we're made.
If I'm dying of phthisis,
It's because my father passed on
To me what the price is