Classic Poem

Things are quieting down again; a little lull
Lies abroad, and daily life grows usual and dull
Britisher turns to his beer again, and relaxes his fists,
Saying: England's not the place for anarchists.
They're all right in the main, they love a bit of fuss:
Know that they're well off, don't want to nitro us.
Where'd they go for shelter if we turned em out?
See?—So, after all, there's nought to worry about.
Only shows the simple soul doesn't know the rules;
Doesn't think, or thinks himself type of all men—fools.
What's the use of knowledge then of these pretty toys?
Things—if they will go off, I let em, and love the noise
Why the trouble to know the habits of nitroglycerin,
Then to go and explain to the public exactly what you mean?
Lovely mixture a biscuit tin, with a fuse and twisted nails;
Something artful packed between;—and the finder tells no tales.

Talk to myself as I sometimes talk, at dinner-time,
Over my food, to a lad who says he lives to rhyme;
Loves all men, he says, all living longing souls:
Germans for his choice, and next to them the Poles
What do I do it for:—play with explosive stuff?
Something like this, says I: I've hungered and hoped enough[,]
Hungered and hoped what for?—hungered and hoped for what?
Only a striking phrase—tommy atrocious rot!
Stood in tail, with the rest, for forty years, to learn
What it was that I wanted; now I've reached my turn.
Found it's neither life nor love we live for, but fun .
Fun it is we want. As yet we haven't begun.
Went up a street, and passed by a money-lender's kitchen;
Snuffled a stink of stew; and it set my fingers itchin';
Seemed they were packing a sardine box with jelly and nails.
Took in the space there was betwixt the barrier rails.
Window's probably open always;—account of the heat—,
Mostly too, I should think, an odour of something to eat.
Grudge him his food? Not I, Etienne Rozenwaltoff.
Envious? not at all—why then? Why it's the fault of
Waiting so long in the tail. I smell him and then I am nerved
Hearing the plaintive announcement; Madam, dinner is served.
See poor Etienne Rozenwaltoff adding his mite,
Sardine box to the banker's feast some fortunate night.
See the dresser and tables dance, and the copper saucepans fly.
Smell the smell of the damned in hell—and the bang! the stricken cry!
Overhead, in the rooms upstairs, the ladies, pale and numb,
Talking trash, when they hear the crash, and think it's Kingdom come.
Great big mirror blunders down with a crockery-laden run;
Pictures fall from the trembling wall;—but as yet we have not begun.
Marbles jump from their wooden stump, lie on their broken noses;
Looks so queer when a chandelier sits in a bowl of roses.
Then we go to our own Soho and wait for the special edition[;]
Did it well, and the papers sell;—that's Rozenwaltoff's position.
Never a word, no one has heard, but the “club” puts up its shutters.
Comrades they, pray for the day, when blood shall run in the gutters.
‘Struth! I'm talking rot again; as I said before,
Let me have my bit of fun, and I want no more.
That's the gospel of anarchy. No! I shall never stop;
Not, at least, till the Polish beast stands on the gallows drop.
Study the papers? Yes, carefully every day;
Read the reports, and what Dewar has got to say
Technical evidence is often worth a mint.
Certainly;—not too proud to take a useful hint.
Like to be Dewar, and be always in a laboratory.
Shouldn't be quite like him, wasted my wisdom in oratory
Party? What do you take me for? they're all alike to me.
Waste my time in a slough of slime, and slight the gallows-tree!
Why don't I go for a bigger business? Well perhaps one day.
—Haven't begun, but I get my fun in just a quiet way.
People sneer that my masterstokes are singularly mild:
Spoil my trick to loosen a brick; to maim a girl or child.
Maim a kid or kill him outright—why what's the odds?
Only serve their bastards as they have served their gods.
Women? what's that? and what is the fuss of a few of em gone to bits?
One of em hurled me into the world; if you like, with my twisted wits.
She didn't know what it means to throw a packet of nitrojam:
Threw to earth, when she gave me birth, a bomb, did my sainted dam.
What are the rest, at the very best? Painted and powdered and curled,
Vain to the quick; (and they make me sick) sworn to the ill of the world.
Ill of the world! just that and none other, is my game too.
Why don't I love em then, for the sake of the game?—I do
Used to meet a fine young fellow, sharp at a regular hour,
Going to rehearsals, always wearing the same sort of flower.
White carnation, I think it was, stuck in his buttonhole;
Smart young chap for a great mishap, placed under my control[.]
Somehow couldn't bear the boy—never did me a wrong—
Couldn't stand his mourning band—thought of it all day long.
Thought I'd chuck him a pound of luck down on the stage one night;
See the scamper and then decamp, lost in the wholesale flight.
Hate?—on the contrary, rather liked him I can't deny;
Only I felt I should like to spoil him, I don't know why.
Smell! I've the stench of a kind of Frenchman, just on my mother's side;
German and Jew, if my name speak true, a bit of a Pole beside
All very well, a German shell or a can of glycerin—
Rope will be slack, or I'll go back to the sharp-toothed guillotine.
All very well, with your Gallic smell; and you may have come from Posen:
Utterly rotten and ill-begotten, the details badly chosen.
Work the fill of your Polish will; or, if you prefer to, preach;
Steadfast hope of a hempen rope is ever within your reach.
Stupid mistake, our friend, you make, with your theory of terror;
Good on the stage, in the Middle Age, but in modern life an error.
Mediaevally speaking, yes! the blow of an unseen hand
Struck more awe than the thing you saw, and thought you could understand
Red from your crime, you count the time till you see the special edition[,]
Rat that you are! you're very far from being the Inquisition.
You'd been swished by the Vehmgericht, torn up by the rotten roots.
Executions of Rosicrucians?—you couldn't have blacked their boots.
Look at you, brute, with your shoddy suit; and jimber-jawed, cock-eyed:
What you declare to the outer air, is earnest of what's inside.
You haven't a spot that doesn't rot; your father and mother drank;
With every disease, from brain to knees, your great-grandfather sank;
Isn't a cell of your cerebellum doesn't house its worm;
Think of your liver, it sends a shiver: but it knows its term.
Mongrel! why, your monstrous eye-brows aren't even a pair;
That on the right obscures your sight, the other touches your hair.
Fact of it is: if you plot till your eyes drop out of their sockets;
Go with a bomb in each hand, and a brace in each of your pockets;
Nobody minds you much, the world can soon adjust
Things to accommodate its human lice and lust.
Dog, if he's got an awful lot of exceedingly active ticks,
Doesn't mind one who has not begun to exhibit his queerest tricks.
Come of the French by an outlaw wench, with a name that was never before
Hung to a face in a Christian race, or cast up on a civilised shore;
Tell us, who are you, after all, if it's not too much?—
Neither a Greek nor Portuguese, and you're neither Dane nor Dutch;
Spain won't own you, Italy, Germany know you not;
Pole?—not you, and you're not a Jew, nor a Hottentot
Let's agree you're nothing but simply human;
Only this is true: you were born of woman.
Waste your days with care, they're probably pretty few.
What's the most, O no-land's-man! that you hope to do?
Fancy not much in any case, for you're not real stuff;
Your's is the kind get left behind with the chaff and bluff[.]
Fancy you can't have had a meal since the Sack of Rome;
Fancy you've lived in many lands, and have found no home.
That sort of training doesn't beget the bone and thew
Fit for revenge on even the banker's Irish stew.
Strike! your best is a pitiful, listless, wristless thrust.
All our business with you is to tread you into dust.
Mix your machines, and let em off as you can—till the muck rebels,
Turns on the master and packs him down to the deepest of all the hells.