Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Heinemann Volume 3).djvu/267

Split it into teeth and tongue?
But you used the tongue to brag;
And what boots the toothed flag
If the dragon dares not bite?
Would the folk had spared those cheers,
And the zealot king those shears!
Four-square flag of peace suffices,
When a stranded craft capsizes,
To give warning of her plight!
  Direr visions, worse foreboding,
Glare upon me through the gloom!
Britain's smoke-cloud sinks corroding
On the land in noisome fume;
Smirches all its tender bloom,
All its gracious verdure dashes,
Sweeping low with breath of bane,
Stealing sunlight from the plain,
Showering down like rain of ashes
On the city of God's doom.—
Fouler featured men are grown;—
Dropping water's humming drone
Echoes through the mine's recesses:
Bustling, smug, a pigmy pack
Plucks its prey from ore's embraces,
Walks with crooked soul and back,
Glares like dwarfs with greedy eyes
For the golden glittering lies;
Speechless souls with lips unsmiling,
Hearts that fall of brothers rends not,
Nor their own to fury frets,
Hammer-wielding, coining, filing;
Light's last gleam forlornly flies;
For this bastard folk forgets
That the need of willing ends not
When the power of willing dies!
  Direr visions, direr doom,