SONNET XII
M. MÉLINE AND MR. ASQUITH
“I care no more for patriotism than for the dirt under my finger-nails.”
—Speech by a Socialist.
Once, only once, a group of men held sway
As wholly false and despicable as those
Whose grovelling souls dishonour and depose
Freedom, inveterate serfs whom slaves obey.
Till the black Dreyfus night-mare passed away
From wakened France when truth and Zola rose,
Méline was Asquith.—At one victim's throes
Tempestuous France grew armed, to mock or slay.
But what of men as truthless and as coarse
Here, who, for some malign nefarious scheme,
Plunge on from crime to crime without remorse:
Who, with mad curse and gibe or vulture's scream,
Cry, till their cowardly senseless throats turn hoarse,
“Empire is but a bauble or a dream?”
December 20, 1910.
