SHRIEKS out of smoke, a flame of dung-straw fire <br />That is not quenched but hath for only fruit <br />What writhes and dies not in its rotten root: <br />Two things made flesh, the visible desire <br />To match in filth the skunk, the ape in ire, <br />Mouthing before the mirrors with wild foot <br />Beyond all feebler footprint of pursuit, <br />The perfect twanger of the Chinese lyre! <br />A heart with generous virtues run to seed <br />In vices making all a jumbled creed: <br />A soul that knows not love nor trust nor shame, <br />But cuts itself with knives to bawl and bleed — <br />If thou we've known of late, art still the same, <br />What need, O soul, to sign thee with thy name? <br />Once on thy lips the golden-honeyed bees <br />Settling made sweet the heart that was not strong, <br />And sky and earth and sea swooned into song: <br />Once on thine eyes the light of agonies <br />Flashed through the soul and robbed the days of ease. <br />But tunes turn stale when love turns babe, and long <br />The exiled gentlemen grow fat with wrong, <br />And peasants, workmen, beggars, what are these? <br />O you who sang the Italian smoke above — <br />Mud-lark of Freedom, pipe of that vile band <br />Whose envy slays the tyrant, not the love <br />Of these poor souls none have the keeping of — <br />It is your hand — it is your pander hand <br />Smites the bruised mouth of pilloried Ireland!<br /><br />Francis William Lauderdale Adams<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/algernon-charles-swinburne/
