"Of his excesses, and I,
Overworked, come off worse.
Just so; but, with these young fiends,
It's quite the reverse.

"Their homes were happy and bright,
(All _are_ in Australia).
Their parents were good, kind, wise:
No breath of failure

"Can be breathed on their education,
Their childhood's surroundings,
The healthy training that gives
Youth morality's groundings.

"Those people who say
That the larrikins come
From that God-spat-out-thing,
The Australian 'home'--

"The narrow harsh rule
Of base mean parents,
Whose played-out ideas drive
All of good and of fair thence:

"That our prostitute girls
Come from just the same Cause--
Why, these idiots know nothing
Of facts, social laws!

"Kill them, then! Hang them all!
We (like God) must be just.
It was all their own faults,
Not ours. . . . Dust to dust!"

II.
(_The Time-Spirit speaks_.)

"Poor lads! And you for others' wrongs and sins
Whose dead past greed and lust did never wince
To make your fathers, mothers, and now you
Miserable fiends in hell, must expiate, since

"We the more guilty, we the strong, the few,
Whose triumph thrusts you down into the stew,
Fear lest our victims rise and rend us, fear
This problem mad we will not listen to!

"Victims, with her your fellow-victim here,
Blind, deaf, dumb beasts, the hour shall yet appear
When men, when justicers resolute-terrible, you
Shall speak and all men tremble as they hear!"

"TYRANNY."
(_Melbourne_.)

[_The Delegates speak_.]

"'Tyranny'? Yes, that's it!
We are not afraid
To face the word that's fit
For what we've said!

"It's the tyranny of the Many,
That will not allow
There's the right to any
To seek wealth and power now

"At the expense of the Many.
Say, that one or this
Works 'over hours': then he
Drives us all to the abyss,

"Where, struggling together
One rises again
While the rest all together
Are stifled and slain.

"From this death-strife of brothers
Comes the tyranny of One.
That's _your_ sort. But we others,
_We prefer our own_!"

FROM A VERANDAH.
(_Sydney_.)
"_Armageddon_."

O city lapped in sun and Sabbath rest,
With happy face of plenteous ease possessed,