A POET AND A STATESMAN
SONNET
“The balance of criminality seems to me to lie with the insurgent bands.”
—Mr. Balfour, in the English House of Commons.
If Wordsworth lived and sang, would not his verse
Ring like a trumpet, rousing hearts and hands,
Awaking noblest rage in listening lands,
Fierce with a righteous god's most passionate curse?
O statesmen, who in sentence trimmed and terse
For deeds that darken heaven apologize,
Do ye not shudder when a nation dies?
What sun shall ever such shoreless gloom disperse?
O Balfour, cease thy rhetoric! Rise and act.
What great high-mettled leader ever found,
While shrieking villages were burnt and sacked,
While thunder of oppression shook the ground,
While a fair land with hell's own hordes was packed,
Life in a phrase, salvation in a sound?
1903.
