Down from the Seven Hills of Rome
Came brutes in human form,
They left their curséd, sinful home
Our Motherland to storm:
Yes, led by Mussolini's own son,
They passed the Old Canal,
And when their war was just begun
They fought like cannibal.

The Rome of sin and human hate
Has plagued the world before,
But God will serve their awful fate
On Ethiopia's shore.
Their guns and gas may threaten all
As hymns they sing at home.
But ere Adowa's final fall
The fight shall pass from Rome.

The God Who is above nation

Her room, bare of all beauty.
She in the gloom of the dull hour,
Midwinter's afternoon,
By the fire, grey and low,
Left of her hours ago,
Now with a little glow
And new stir in it just made by her,
Weary, come in alone,
Musing, “Did I ever wince
At sorrow, or pain of my profession, the parish doctor,
Chosen eleven years since,
As now? Though there has been torture enough, I trow,
Only a word or two just heard
Have set my heart throbbing so—
Can it rest again?
Matched with this, it was scarcely pain
That I felt by the dying man yonder,

Thou pirate nested over Alde!
Stern wrecker of the Established Faith!
From whom the parson shrinks appalled;
In whom the mariner sees his wraith;
Attracts thee in the gassy glare
Of evening some fishmonger's slab?
And still dost mix for supper fare,
The shelly with poetic Crabbe?
Or else, while sinks the enlarging star,
Of night libidinous the herald,
Thou drink'st of ebrious Omar
From the gold goblet named FitzGerald?
Then into Nature's entrails peer'st,
Not finding there the Christian God;
Or on the surface pioneer'st

Like the first star that heralds glorious eve,
Like the first blush that beckons in the day,
Like the first snowdrop lavish Aprils weave
To deck the bosom of the festive May;
Like the warm carol of the early bird
Whose note was mute before, or idly heard;
Like all dear things just bursting; like the bloom

Of the first rosebud rending its green tomb,—
So burst thy love upon my helpless life,
Dear Mother, when that hour of pain and strife
That laid me in thine arms, gave place to tears
Of exquisite, sweet joy and holy fears!

Some people have names like pitchforks, some people have names like cakes,
Names full of sizzling esses like a family quarrel of snakes,
Names black as a cat, vermilion as the cockscomb-hat of a fool—
But your name is a green, small garden, a rush asleep in a pool.

When God looked at the diffident cherubs and dropped them out of the sky,
He named them like Adam's animals, while Mary and Eve stood by,
The poor things huddled before him in scared little naked flocks
—And he gave you a name like sunlight, and clover, and hollyhocks.

O iron tongue of Time, with thy sharp metallic tone,
Thy terrible voice affrights me:
Each beat of the clock summons me,
Calls me and hurries me to the grave.
Scarcely have I opened my eyes upon the world,
Ere Death grinds his teeth,
And with his scythe, that gleams like lightning,
Cuts off my days, which are but grass.

Not one of the horned beasts of the field,
Not a single blade of grass escapes,
Monarch and beggar alike are food for the worm.
The noxious elements feed the grave,
And Time effaces all human glory;

He was only a lavender cowboy,
The hairs on his chest were two. …
He wished to follow the heroes
Who fight as the he-men do.

Yet he was inwardly troubled
By a dream that gave no rest;
When he read of heroes in action,
He wanted more hair on his chest.

Herpicide, many hair-tonics
Were rubbed in morning and night. …
Still, when he looked in the mirror
No new hair grew in sight.

He battled for “Red Nell's” honor
Then cleaned out a hold-up nest,
And died with his six-guns smoking. …
But only-two hairs on his chest.

You look in vain for a sign,
For a light in their eyes. No!
Stolid they sit, lulled
By the roar of the train in the tube,
Content with the electric light,
Assured, comfortable, warm.
Despair? . . . .
For a moment, yes:
This is the mass, inert,
Unalarmed, undisturbed;
And we, the spirit that moves,
We leaven the mass,
And it changes;
We sweeten the mass,
Or the world
Would stink in the ether.

As evening slowly spreads his mantle hoar,
No ruder sounds the bounded valley fill,
Than the faint din, from yonder sedgy shore,
Of rushing waters, and the murmuring mill.

How sunk the scene, where cloister'd Leisure mus'd!
Where war-worn Edward paid his awful vow
And, lavish of magnificence, diffus'd
His crowded spires o'er the broad mountain's brow!

The golden fans, that o'er the turrets strown,
Quick-glancing to the sun, wild music made,
Are reft, and every battlement o'ergrown
With knotted thorns, aad the tall sapling's shade.

When peace has come, and I return from France,
I know the places that I'll long to see:
Those hunch-backed hills so full of old romance,
Where first frail Beauty's visions dawned for me,
And April comes, swift, dancing like a girl,
With golden tresses flowing in the breeze,
And where swart, autumn leaves disport and whirl,
In maudlin dance beneath the naked trees.

And I shall see the cottage on the hill,
With all the loveliness of summer days,
Whose memories to me are haunted still
By love's sweet voice, the witchery of her ways.