They leave us -- artists, singers, all --
When London calls aloud,
Commanding to her Festival
The gifted crowd.
She sits beside the ship-choked Thames,
Sad, weary, cruel, grand;
Her crown imperial gleams with gems
From many a land.
From overseas, and far away,
Come crowded ships and ships --
Grim-faced she gazes on them; yes,
With scornful lips.
The garden of the earth is wide;
Its rarest blooms she picks
To deck her board, this haggard-eyed
Imperatrix.
Sad, sad is she, and yearns for mirth:
With voice of golden guile
She lures men from the ends of earth
To make her smile.
The student of wild human ways
In wild new lands; the sage
With new great thoughts; the bard whose lays
Bring youth to age;
The painter young whose pictures shine
With colours magical,
The singer with the voice divine --
She lures them all.
But all their new is old to her
Who bore the Anakim;
She gives them gold or Charon's fare
As suits her whim.
Crowned Ogress -- old, and sad, and wise --
She sits with painted face
And hard, imperious, cruel eyes
In her high place.
To him who for her pleasure lives,
And makes her wish his goal,
A rich Tarpeian gift she gives --
That slays his soul.
The story-teller from the Isles
Upon the Empire's rim,
With smiles she welcomes - and her smiles
Are death to him.
For Her, whose pleasure is her law,
In vain the shy heart bleeds --
The Genius with the Iron Jaw
Alone succeeds.
And when the Poet's lays grow bland,
And urbanised, and prim --
She stretches forth a jewelled hand
And strangles him.
She sits beside the ship-choked Thames,
With Sphinx-like lips apart --
Mistress of many diadetus --
Death in her heart.
First published in The Bulletin, 8 December 1900;
and later in
Wine and Roses by Victor J. Daley, 1911;
The Lone Hand, January 1912;
The Penguin Book of Australian Verse edited by Harry Heseltine, 1972;
The Collins Book of Australian Poetry compiled by Rodney Hall, 1981;
A Treasury of Colonial Poetry, 1982;
The Penguin Book of Australian Satirical Verse edited by Phillip Neilsen, 1986;
The Sting in the Wattle: Australian Satirical Verse edited by Phillip Neilsen, 1993;
London Was Full of Rooms edited by Tully Barnett, Rick Hosking, S.C. Harrex, Nena Bierbaum, and Graham Tulloch, 1998; and
Southerly, Vol. 71 No. 1 2011.
Author reference sites: Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian Poetry Library
See also.
See also.
