Classic Poem

Tis not when I am here,
In these homeless homes,
Where sin and shame and disease
And foul death comes;

'Tis not when heart and brain
Would be still and forget
Men and women and children
Dragged down to the pit:

But when I hear them declaiming
Of “liberty,” “order,” and “law,”
The husk-hearted Gentlemen
And the mud-hearted Bourgeois,

That a sombre hateful desire
Burns up slow in my breast
To wreck the great guilty Temple,
And give us rest!