NEMESIS
SONNET
In the concentration camps in South Africa fourteen thousand
children died
“like faded flowers.”
I dreamed that England in strange far-off days
Stood fiercely wrestling with embattled foes:
As each fell writhing lo! another rose,
And round our headlands and blue sunlit bays
Brooded a sinister and smoke-stained haze.
Each morning brought a prophecy of woes
Fulfilled in monstrous sequence. At the close
Of day the shuddering moon lit blood-red ways.
At last the brave land triumphed, and the light
Of morn was shining forth on hill and plain
When lo! between our England and the sun
Rose the pale ghosts of countless children slain;
And England wholly immersed in hopeless night
Fell prone, by one vast crime for ever undone.
Feb. 13, 1902.
