Panama and Other Poems Narrative and Occasional By Stephen Phillips: With a Frontispiece by Joseph Pennell |
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 | Panama and Other Poems Narrative and Occasional |  |
68
RED RUBBER
Why is the rubber of that motor red?To make it so a thousand Indians bled.
And England once the haven of the free,
Stands guilty if but as accessory.
The blood of woman and of child must gush
That Smith may on the road more smoothly rush;
The bleeding back by Satan's thong is scarred,
That Mrs. Smith's nerve-system be not jarred.
Against the tree they dash the child's brains out
That Brown may glide more easefully about.
And Indian forms reel riddled to the dust
To gratify an European lust.
Commerce and Christianity combine
And kneel at last before a common shrine.
Idle how long will England choose to be,
Who erst did whip the slaver from the sea?
Whose flag hath waved o'er half the world's oppressed,
69
How long shall she endure to have it hissed
“Britain and slavery at length have kissed!”
How long to see son, mother, daughter, sire,
Butchered to make an English motor-tyre?
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