THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 V
 
 SONGS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE DEAD END
 
 PATRICK MAcGILL was born at Glenties, a 
 little village in one of the wildest districts of 
 Donegal on the north coast of Ireland, twenty-one 
 years ago. The eldest of a family of ten, he had to go 
 out into the world at a very early age and begin his 
 fight in the great battle of life. When twelve years 
 old he was engaged as a farm hand in the Irish Mid- 
 lands, where his day's work began at five o'clock in the 
 morning and went on till eleven at night through 
 Summer and Winter. It was a man's work with a 
 boy's pay. At fourteen, seeking newer fields, he 
 crossed from 'Derry to Scotland ; and there for seven 
 years was either a farm hand, drainer, tramp, hammer- 
 man, navvy, plate-layer or wrestler. During all these 
 years he devoted part of his spare time to reading, 
 and found relief from the drag of the twelve-hour 
 shift in the companionship of books. At nineteen he 
 published " Gleanings from a Navvy's Scrap-book," of 
 which 8000 copies were sold. Encouraged by the suc- 
 cess which marked this venture, he immediately gath- 
 ered material for a new volume, and while engaged in 
 so doing, received an appointment on the editorial staff 
 of the "Daily Express," and in September, 1911, left 
 the service of the Caledonian Railway Company at 
 Greenock and came to London. In the following year 
 he relinquished his post with the newspaper, and pub- 
 lished " Songs of a Navvy." This, as well as the 
 former, being now out of print, he has put together 
 some of the pieces out of either, re-written others, and 
 added fresh ones to the same in the present "Songs of 
 the Dead End." 
 
 J. N. D. 
 WINDSOR, July, 1912
 
 THE NAVVY 
 
 REMOTE from mansion and from mart, 
 Beyond our outer, furrowed fields 
 One with the rock he cleaves apart, 
 
 One with the weary pick he wields 
 Bowed with his weight of discontent, 
 Beneath the heavens sagging gray, 
 His steaming shoulders stark and bent, 
 He drags his joyless years away. 
 
 For dreamy dames with haughty eyes, 
 
 And cunning men with soft white hands 
 Have offered you in sacrifice 
 
 Lone outcast of the outcast lands. 
 For all the furs that keep them warm, 
 
 For all the food that keeps them fit, 
 Through all the years they Ve wrought you harm, 
 
 And take a churlish pride in it. 
 
 Brutish we Ve hashed it far and near, 
 
 I Ve shared your woe and dull despair ; 
 We Ve sung our songs, and none to hear, 
 
 And told our wrongs, and none to care. 
 Some day how soon we may not tell 
 
 We '11 rend the riven fetters free. 
 Till then, may heaven guard you well, 
 
 And God be good to you and me.
 
 SONGS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE DEAD END 
 
 BY 
 
 PATRICK MAcGILL 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 MITCHELL KENNERLEY 
 MCMXIV
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY 
 THE YEAR BOOK PRESS
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Navvy iii 
 
 Dedication x 
 
 The Pick n 
 
 The Song of the Shovel 14 
 
 By-the-Way 18 
 
 A Navvy's Philosophy 19 
 
 The Faith of a Child 25 
 
 Fishing 27 
 
 The Song of the Tramps 28 
 
 The Song of the Lost 30 
 
 Fate 31 
 
 The Bootless Bairn 32 
 
 The Song of the Cigarette 33 
 
 The Slum-Child 36 
 
 In the Midnight 37 
 
 The Calling Voice 38 
 
 Roaming '39 
 
 Padding It 40 
 
 Serfs 45 
 
 Love 50 
 
 Played Out 51 
 
 The Woe of It 54 
 
 The Long Road 55 
 
 Have You 57 
 
 The Song of the Drainer 60 
 
 The Ballad of Maclndoe 62 
 
 The Song of Maloney 66 
 
 Bad News 69 
 
 The Passing of Maloney 71 
 
 The Gravedigger 75 
 
 A Spring Idyll 77 
 
 My Dream Girl 78 
 
 Logic 80 
 
 Boreas 83 
 
 The Navvy Chorus 86 
 
 Twenty-One 88 
 
 The Waters 91 
 
 612756
 
 viii Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Ballad of the Long Dam > 94 
 
 "Hell!" 97 
 
 The Conger Eel 100 
 
 Back from Kinlochleven 102 
 
 Death of Moleskin 106 
 
 Choses du Soir 108 
 
 The Song of Werner no 
 
 The Slave Ill 
 
 A Geological Nightmare 117 
 
 The Pioneer 119 
 
 The House of Rest 121 
 
 The Old Men 123 
 
 The End 125 
 
 "No More" 126 
 
 Salve, Rex Dei Gracia 128 
 
 Down on the Dead End 130 
 
 Run Down 132 
 
 With the Breakdown Squad 133 
 
 On the Late Shift 136 
 
 A Last Wish 139 
 
 Dreamings 140 
 
 Mater Dolorosa 141 
 
 Unfulfilled 143 
 
 The Valley 145 
 
 A Tale of the Bogland 147 
 
 Longings 149 
 
 Going Home 151 
 
 The Return 153 
 
 Home 154 
 
 The Departed 156 
 
 Heroes 158 
 
 The Old Lure 161 
 
 The Last Rhyme, save One 164 
 
 L'Envoi 167
 
 I do not sing 
 
 Of angel fair or damozel 
 
 That leans athwart a painted sky ; 
 
 My little verses only tell 
 
 How human beings live and die, 
 And labour as their years go by. 
 
 I do not sing 
 
 Of plaster saints or jealous gods, 
 But of the little ones I know, 
 
 Who paint their cheeks or bear their hods 
 Because they live in doing so 
 Their hapless life on earth below. 
 
 I sing of them 
 
 Whose lives are varied as their creeds 
 I've shared their every toil and care, 
 I know their many hopes and needs, 
 I've seen Death take them unaware; 
 Mayhap some day their death I 'II share. 
 
 I sing their life, 
 
 Misknown, miscalled, misunderstood, 
 Its ups and downs, its outs and ins ; 
 
 I know the evil and the good, 
 
 Where virtue ends and vice begins 
 But judge no mortal by his sins. 
 
 I sing of them, 
 
 The underworld, the great oppressed, 
 
 Befooled of parson, priest, and king, 
 Who mutely plod earth's pregnant breast, 
 Who weary of their sorrowing, 
 The Great Unwashed of them I sing. 
 
 I sing my songs, 
 
 In mirthful guise or woeful strain ; 
 
 I've dwelt where woe and hunger dwell, 
 
 And told my rosaries of pain 
 
 / sing my songs to you and well, 
 You'll maybe like them who can tell? 
 
 IQII
 
 THESE VERSES ARE DEDICATED 
 TO 
 
 anb 
 
 Because we have swined in the drift, 
 
 Because we have horsed it alone, 
 Strong, unafraid, or in shine or in shade, 
 
 Companionless and unknown ; 
 
 Because we have laboured our bit 
 
 For all our impetuous worth, 
 Roughing it hard, discarded and scarred, 
 
 In the uttermost corners of earth ; 
 
 Through the drag of the long, stagnant day, 
 
 Where the infinite wilderness is, 
 As we slunk from the breath of an imminent death 
 
 In this tortuous world of His ; 
 
 Since we have been pals of the wild, 
 
 Tried in the furnace and true, 
 Don't take it amiss if I dedicate this 
 
 Volume of verses to you. 
 
 PATRICK 
 
 ON THE OPEN ROAD, 
 October, ign
 
 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 THE PICK 
 
 IN the depths of the pluvial season it gallantly stayed 
 to your hand, 
 
 In the dead end of woe and creation, afar in the fur- 
 thermost land, 
 
 When the saturnine heavens hung o'er you as dark as 
 the ultimate tomb, 
 
 When the trough of the valley you gutted was filled 
 with ineffable gloom, 
 
 When down in the depths of the planet uprooting the 
 brontosaur's bed, 
 
 With the fire damp w r rithing around you, and a candle 
 affixed to your head, 
 
 When the gold-seeking fever enthralled you, when you 
 fitfully watered the pan, 
 
 Ever it strove to your bidding, ever it aided your plan, 
 
 Ready, resistless, reticent, friend of the conquering man ! 
 
 See that its edge is like silver, tempered to try and be 
 
 tried, 
 Look on your pick as a lover would gaze on the girl 
 
 at his side, 
 If it responds to your promptings, when the navvy men 
 
 hurry and sweat, 
 If it be proof to the tempest, when the clouds and the 
 
 dirt-bed have met, 
 If its handle be graceful and lissome, slipping and soft 
 
 in the hand,
 
 12 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 Brothers, 't is meet for its mission, tend it, for ye under- 
 stand ; 
 
 Try it with fire and with water, try it in sand and in 
 rock, 
 
 See that the slag can't resist it, see that it beareth the 
 shock, 
 
 Hurling the rock from its fastness, goring the destitute 
 earth, 
 
 Tearing the guts of the tunnel, seeking the coal for the 
 hearth 
 
 Down in the Stygian darkness, ye who can reckon its 
 worth ! 
 
 Work it for days one and twenty, then if it 's true to 
 
 the test, 
 Look on your pick as a maiden, but often the pick is 
 
 the best, 
 For the temper of women when broken, e'en heaven 
 
 can't better the same, 
 But the pick will regain what it loses with the touch 
 
 of the hammer and flame, 
 And for aye will it answer your yearning, be true to 
 
 the trust that ye place, 
 But ofttimes the falsest of females is fair in the glance of 
 
 the face, 
 And fickle, and sure as she 's fickle, your sweetheart in 
 
 labour is true 
 As long as there 's grub on the hot-plate, as long as 
 
 there 's hashing to do, 
 While the hail-harried winter is scowling, while the 
 
 skies of the summer are blue. 
 
 Enough ! for the pick has been trusted, enough ! for the 
 pick has been tried
 
 Songs of the Dead End 13 
 
 In the uncharted lands of the world, past where the 
 
 pathways divide, 
 Where the many lead into the city of mimicry, aping 
 
 and show, 
 
 Where one leads away to the vastness, the infinite vast- 
 ness you know, 
 And there with the grim pioneer it wrought in the 
 
 shine and the shade, 
 While he feared in the gloom and the silence, afraid as 
 
 a child is afraid, 
 Pleased with his rough hand's caresses, slave to his 
 
 wish and his whim 
 Away on the fringe of the world, comrade and 
 
 brother to him. 
 
 Enough, for the pick has been trusted, in hazardous, 
 
 desperate years, 
 When the wine press was trodden alone for the vintage 
 
 of sorrow and tears, 
 Under the blight of the upas, the bane of the vampire's 
 
 wing, 
 Shaping the founds of a temple, razing the keeps of a 
 
 king; 
 To labour that stood as its sponsor for the fiery baptism 
 
 given, 
 It has proved its worth, on a toil-cursed earth, and 
 
 under the eyes of heaven ; 
 
 Staunch in the pitiless combat, vigorous, virile and bold, 
 To-day I give it the honour our fathers denied it of 
 
 old, 
 To-day I have sung its praises, and told of the honour 
 
 due 
 
 To the pick that was ever trusted, tried on the dead- 
 line and true.
 
 14 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 THE SONG OF THE SHOVEL 
 
 DOWN on creation's muck-pile where the sinful 
 swelter and sweat, 
 
 Where the scum of the earth foregather, rough and un- 
 tutored yet, 
 Where they swear in the six-foot spaces, or toil in the 
 
 barrow squad, 
 
 The men of unshaven faces, the ranks of the very bad ; 
 Where the brute is more than the human, the muscle 
 
 more than the mind, 
 Where their gods are the loud-voiced gaffers, rugged, 
 
 uncouth, unkind; 
 Where the rough of the road are roosting, where the 
 
 failed and the fallen be, 
 There have we met in the ditchway, there have I 
 
 plighted with thee, 
 The wage-slave troth of our union, and found thee true 
 
 to my trust, 
 Stoic in loveless labour, companion when beggared and 
 
 burst, 
 Wonderful navvy shovel, last of tools and the first. 
 
 Your grace is the grace of a woman, you 're strong as 
 
 the oak is strong; 
 Wonderful unto the navvy, the navvy who sings your 
 
 song 
 
 For ever patient, and ready to do what your master bids, 
 Though you laboured at Beni Hassan, and wrought at 
 
 the Pyramids, 
 Uprearing the Grecian temple, the gold Byzantium 
 
 dome,
 
 Songs of the Dead End 15 
 
 The palaces proud of Susa, the legended walls of 
 
 Rome, 
 
 In the earliest days of Egypt, in evil-starred Nineveh, 
 When your masters who be were whirling, inane in the 
 
 Milky Way, 
 In Pompeii of the sorrows, ere the lava of hate was 
 
 hurled 
 From the fiery mouth of the mountain, in the passionate 
 
 days of the world. 
 
 Older than all tradition, older than Ops or Thor, 
 Gods of the Dane or Roman, gods of the plough or 
 
 war, 
 In dark preadamite ages used by the primitive 
 
 man, 
 And unto his needs were shapen ere custom and cant 
 
 began 
 A servant to Talos the Potter were you in the ages 
 
 dim 
 But you helped in the drift of seasons to fashion the 
 
 urn for him. 
 
 But you 're foul to the haughty woman, bediamonded 
 
 slave of lust, 
 Who bows to a seignior's sabre, tinged with a coward's 
 
 rust, 
 Foul to the aping dandy with the glittering finger 
 
 rings, 
 You who have helped to fashion the charnel vault of 
 
 the kings! 
 Ah! the lady fair is disdainful and loathingly looks 
 
 askew, 
 And the collared ass of the circle gazes in scorn at 
 
 you,
 
 1 6 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 But some day you '11 scatter the clay on grinning lady 
 
 and lord, 
 For yours is the cynical triumph over the sceptre and 
 
 sword ! 
 
 Emperors pass in an hour, empires pass in a day, 
 But you of the line and muckpile open the grave 
 alway. 
 
 Tell me what are thy graces, what are the merits of 
 
 thine ? 
 Answer ye slaves of the railway, answer ye dupes of 
 
 the mine. 
 What do you mean to the navvy, moleskinned serf of 
 
 the ditch, 
 
 Piling the courts of pleasure up for the vampire rich? 
 What do you mean to the muck-men, forespent slaves 
 
 of the street ? 
 Life for the wives that love them, food for their babes 
 
 to eat, 
 
 Who wear their fetters of being, down where no sun- 
 shine conies 
 In the Christian country of sorrows, the civilized land 
 
 of slums. 
 
 Wonderful, ancient shovel, tool of the labour slave! 
 To you the sparkle of silver the hammer and furnace 
 
 gave, 
 For you the virginal forest was stripped of its stateliest 
 
 trees, 
 And you have the temper that flame has, and you have 
 
 the graces of these. 
 Athens and Rome have known you, London and Paris 
 
 know,
 
 Songs of the Dead End 17 
 
 You '11 raise the towns of the future when the towns 
 of the present go 
 
 A race will esteem and praise you in the days that are 
 to be, 
 
 When I am silent and songless and the headstone crum- 
 bles on me! 
 
 Wonderful navvy shovel, the days are near at hand 
 When you 'II rise o'er sword and sceptre a mighty 
 power in the land.
 
 1 8 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 BY-THE-WAY 
 
 THESE be the little verses, rough and uncultured, 
 which 
 
 I Ve written in hut and model, deep in the dirty ditch, 
 On the upturned hod by the palace made for the idle 
 rich. 
 
 Out on the happy highway, or lines where the engines 
 
 go, 
 Which fact you may hardly credit, still for your doubts 
 
 'tis so, 
 For I am the person who wrote them, and surely to 
 
 God, I know! 
 
 Wrote them beside the hot-plate, or under the chilling 
 
 skies, 
 Some of them true as death is, some of them merely 
 
 lies, 
 Some of them very foolish, some of them otherwise. 
 
 Little sorrows and hopings, little and rugged Rhymes, 
 Some of them maybe distasteful to the moral men of 
 
 our times, 
 Some of them marked against me in the Book of the 
 
 Many Crimes. 
 
 These, the Songs of a Navvy, bearing the taint of the 
 
 brute, 
 
 Unasked, uncouth, unworthy, out to the world I put, 
 Stamped with the brand of labour, the heel of a navvy's 
 
 boot.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 19 
 
 A NAVVY'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 ACROSS life's varied ways we drift 
 Unto the tomb that yawns in wait, 
 One ruling o'er the mighty state, 
 One sweating on the double shift. 
 
 I Ve whirled adown the sinful slope 
 That leads to chasms of despair, 
 And dwelt in haunts of hunger where 
 
 The spectre sorrow jeers at hope. 
 
 My ways are cast with many men 
 Who fight with destiny and fail, 
 The down and outers of the jail, 
 
 The tavern and the gambling den 
 
 The men who bet and drink and curse, 
 Who tread the labyrinthine maze 
 Of sin, who move on rugged ways, 
 
 Who might be better ay, and worse ! 
 
 My dead-end comrades true as steel, 
 The men who bravely bear the goad, 
 The wild uncultured of the road 
 
 Like them I speak just as I feel. 
 
 'Neath silver skies with silence shod, 
 Engirdled by the Milky Way, 
 And set with stars of brightest ray, 
 
 As fits the far-off paths of God,
 
 20 
 
 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 I 've slept with them ; in lonely lands, 
 Ere came the city vomit thence 
 To take the house and claim the fence 
 
 Built with the toil of calloused hands, 
 
 I Ve wrought with them ; where gin shops smell, 
 And stagnant models smut the town, 
 I Ve shared their plaints when out and down 
 
 My brothers, don't I know them well! 
 
 I Ve begged with them from door to door, 
 And thought unutterable things 
 Of lands where courtiers and where kings 
 
 Still grind the faces of the poor. 
 
 The cold grub eaten in the dawn, 
 
 The wet shag smouldering as you smoke, 
 For ever being down and broke, 
 
 You learn to like it later on. 
 
 You learn to like it for you must, 
 
 Though hardly worth the pains you take, 
 Or yet the sacrifice you make 
 
 The barter for the vital crust. 
 
 Of things abstruse I cannot sing 
 In fitting strains, so let me say, 
 From hand to mouth, from day to day 
 
 Is not the right and proper thing. 
 
 But let me sing in gayer strain, 
 
 The glory of the wilder life, 
 
 Apart a little from the strife, 
 The feline fury and the pain.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 21 
 
 Despite the hate insensate which 
 
 The fates have borne to crush me low, 
 I love to watch the puppet show 
 
 And count myself exceeding rich. 
 
 You say I own no lordly halls, 
 
 No parks extending far and wide, 
 
 No cornice, column, cusp of pride, 
 No paintings hanging from my walls. 
 
 No hall of pride with fresco decked ? 
 My mountain pillars rear on high, 
 My floor the earth, my roof the sky, 
 
 And God Himself the Architect. 
 
 No paintings from a master's hand ? 
 
 My canvas spreads from flower to star 
 
 Barbaric, grand, anear, afar, 
 From sea to sea, from land to land. 
 
 No deep cathedral music swells 
 
 For me, you say, I own it true, 
 
 But under Heaven's gentian blue, 
 What strains of sweetness fill the dells! 
 
 The rustle of the wind-swept trees, 
 
 The robin's song at early morn, 
 
 The larks above the crimson corn, 
 What music in the world like these! 
 
 All, all are mine. The simple flower, 
 The ocean in its madding wrath, 
 The drunken wind that beats my path, 
 
 The arched skies that shine or lower.
 
 22 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 I Ve sailed on ships with sails of fire, 
 By amber ports, through carmine seas, 
 And opal-tinted argosies, 
 
 To dreamt-of islands of desire. 
 
 For me the music of the streams, 
 The tints of gold on heath and furze, 
 Where wind-blown gorse clumps shake their spurs, 
 
 For me the wonder-world of dreams. 
 
 While you are selling at the mart, 
 Or buying souls to glut your greed, 
 (Who fatten on your brother's need,) 
 
 In lonely ways I dwell apart: 
 
 Or when the jewelled carcanet 
 
 Of Heaven decks the darkling sky, 
 
 Beside the cabin fire I lie 
 And smoke my soothing cigarette, 
 
 And dip in some enchanted page, 
 
 Or linger o'er a story told 
 
 By some grey chronicler of old, 
 The dreamer of a long-past age. 
 
 And as the smoke wreaths rise, meseems 
 
 I live in Ind or Babylon, 
 
 And share the hopes of poets gone, 
 The dreamers of aesthetic dreams. 
 
 Or sing of Rome, or bleed for Troy, 
 
 Or dwell in Tyre or Nineveh 
 
 But ah! 'tis fancy's boundless play, 
 The wayward dreamings of a boy.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 23 
 
 'Tis sweet to write it down in verse, 
 Or think of it, but all the same, 
 If e'er you try you '11 find the game 
 
 Is hardly worth a tinker's curse. 
 
 The open road is passing grand 
 
 When skimming on a motor car, 
 
 But dossing 'neath the pallid star 
 Is something you don't understand. 
 
 In fact you '11 hardly realize 
 
 While lounging in your drawing room, 
 How drear December's dirge of doom 
 
 Across the snow-clad level flies. 
 
 Or how the frosty crowbar sears 
 
 The hand that lifts it from the drift 
 You '11 learn it on the ten-hour shift 
 
 Where I was learning all these years. 
 
 You '11 likewise learn the useful rule, 
 
 The motto of the navvy man, 
 
 To do as little as you can 
 And keep your pipe and stomach full. 
 
 The song I sing is very rude, 
 
 In sin mayhap my life I live, 
 
 But ye are wise and will forgive 
 As none of us are very good. 
 
 We sin we '11 sorrow later on ! 
 
 We laugh some day we 're sure to weep ! 
 
 We live by night we '11 fall asleep, 
 And none may waken us at dawn!
 
 24 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 And we are brothers one and all, 
 
 Some day we '11 know through Heaven's grace, 
 And then the drudge will find a place 
 
 Beside the master of the hall.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 25 
 
 THE FAITH OF A CHILD 
 
 I'VE learned the tale of the crooning waves 
 And the lore of the honey bee, 
 The Mermaids' song in the lonely caves 
 Of Rosses by the sea. 
 
 For I 'm never let out to the dance and wake, 
 
 Because I 'm a gasair small ; 
 But stay at home, for my mother's sake, 
 
 And never grow weary at all. 
 
 She taught me the lore of the fairy men, 
 
 Who live in the haunted rath; 
 And tells me to pray to Mary, when 
 
 I cross the gossamer path. 
 
 For it 's true that the gossamer threads are thrown 
 
 From the holly tree to the grass, 
 When the moon-white night is long and lone, 
 
 For the fairy band to pass. 
 
 But, if ever you cross their way at all, 
 
 May Mary be with you then, 
 For they steal the children into their hall 
 
 That 's hid in the haunted glen. 
 
 The hall that 's under the gentle thorn, 
 
 Where my little brother must stay, 
 For the fairies came, before I was born, 
 
 And stole my brother away.
 
 26 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 And mother says he is free from pain 
 (They have kept him seven years) 
 
 Yet she 'd rather far have him back again, 
 And tells me so in tears. 
 
 Ah! many a song she has sung to me, 
 
 And many a song she knew, 
 And many a story there used to be, 
 
 And Mother's tales are true. 
 
 So I know the chant of the crooning waves 
 And the lore of the honey bee, 
 
 And the Mermaids' song in the lonely caves, 
 Of Rosses by the sea.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 27 
 
 FISHING 
 
 WHEN the sheep on the brae are lying still 
 And the lone lake waters weep, 
 When the pale-faced moon comes over the hill 
 
 And my brothers and sisters sleep, 
 I wander out by the brooklet's edge 
 
 Where moon-limned waters run, 
 And see the fays from the trailing sedge 
 Come silently one by one 
 
 Come silently out to fish for trout 
 
 With a hook of silver fine, 
 A rye-grass stalk for a fishing-rod, 
 
 And a gossamer thread for line. 
 
 But there is n't a fish in all the brook, 
 
 And it 's me that ought to know, 
 For I caught the little minnows and took 
 
 Them with me long ago 
 I lifted them up from the golden sand 
 
 Into my pannikin small, 
 Yet the fairies stay till the dawn of day 
 
 And never catch one at all. 
 
 I took the little minnows myself 
 
 And left them down in the well, 
 As nobody saw me place them there, 
 
 Sure no one at all can tell 
 The fairy fishers where they are gone, 
 
 The pretty wee fish inside 
 The well that is marked by St. Colum's cross 
 
 And the cross of good Saint Bride!
 
 28 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 THE SONG OF THE TRAMPS 
 
 T 
 
 SHE eager hands will never take us back, 
 
 The luring eyes will never draw us home, 
 With the changing heaven o'er us, and the white road 
 
 stretched before us, 
 
 Sure the world is ours to revel in and roam 
 We have padded it, alone, afar, apart, 
 We have roughed it to the ultimate extremes, 
 Where the blazing dawn-tints kindle, or the sun-kissed 
 
 rivers dwindle 
 In a land of fairy fantasies and dreams. 
 
 Would we linger in the city and the stench, 
 
 The alleys and the fetid walls amid, 
 In the dirt beyond all telling of the festered, filthy 
 dwelling 
 
 And the gutter degradation God forbid ! 
 
 We are not the fools you reckon us to be, 
 
 Our woebegone appearances are shammed, 
 Tho' we act the discontented, on the byways unfre- 
 quented, 
 
 We are n't so incorrigibly damned. 
 
 We doss it 'neath the timid shaky stars, 
 
 Where the mountains shrink and cower overawed, 
 
 In the gaunt mysterious places, with the dew upon our 
 
 faces, 
 
 While the breathless night goes by in silence shod, 
 As the pallid, leprous, moon above us frets, 
 By the fitful fire-flames flickering undersized, 
 
 We think as men unshriven, of an evil unforgiven, 
 Of the many hopes we never realized.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 29 
 
 Oh! the dreaming and the fancy and the hope, 
 The wonder and the worry of it all, 
 
 The gipsy blood that 's flowing through our veins will 
 
 keep us going 
 
 On the road while thrushes sing or sparrows fall ; 
 By meadows waving lazily and slow, 
 By streamlets singing songs of wild desires, 
 
 And the eyes of heaven peeping will keep watch above 
 
 us sleeping, 
 And the dawn will see the ashes of our fires. 
 
 To the wealth of Mother Nature we are heirs, 
 The skies of opal, amber, sapphire hue, 
 
 The moorland and the meadows, the sunshine and the 
 
 shadows, 
 
 We love them for we Ve nothing else to do ! 
 The eager hands will never lure us back, 
 The plaintive eyes can never draw us home, 
 
 With the heaven bending o'er us and the white road 
 
 stretched before us, 
 Sure the world is ours to revel in and roam.
 
 30 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 THE SONG OF THE LOST 
 
 WHAT will be left when the siren city 
 Ceases to lure and ceases to pay, 
 When poverty hovers across my way, 
 When years have sullied my sinful grace? 
 No mother's love, and no father's pity, 
 No fondling lover, no children gay, 
 To plant a kiss on their mother's face. 
 
 The kisses I Ve had were born of passion, 
 And the love was the lust of brutal men 
 Wild from the bar or gambling den, 
 My jewels were bought in a soul's eclipse, 
 For I was gay in an evil fashion 
 Queen of the sodden alley, when 
 They paid for kissing my painted lips. 
 
 Look how the lamps of London twinkle, 
 
 Hark how the bells of London toll, 
 
 " Pledge thyself for the devil's dole, 
 
 Fool of the empty tinsel show 
 
 But what avails when the brow shall wrinkle, 
 
 The lone regrets of a stricken soul, 
 
 The nightly wail of a sleepless woe? "
 
 Songs of the Dead End 31 
 
 FATE 
 
 THE cloudwrack o'er the heaven flies, 
 The wild wind whistles on the lake, 
 The drooping branches in the brake 
 Mourn for the pale blue butterflies. 
 
 Where is the sheen of green and gold? 
 
 The sullen Winter's beard is hoar. 
 
 Where are the fruits the Autumn bore? 
 We know not, who are growing old. 
 
 We pulled the dainty flowers of spring, 
 But we were happy being young 
 And now when Autumn's knell is rung 
 
 We wither 'neath the vampire wing.
 
 32 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 THE BOOTLESS BAIRN 
 
 (1909) 
 
 DAYS of the whirling snowflakes, nights of the 
 weeping wind, 
 That move to a gloomy future, that come from the 
 
 dark behind, 
 
 Carry upon their bosoms the sorrows of hope defiled 
 The wail of the bootless bairn, the cry of the hapless 
 child. 
 
 Not for him is the Christmas and all the sweets it 
 
 brings, 
 Nor does he share the New Year's hope of bright and 
 
 beautiful things, 
 Ah, never for him is the festal board with Nature's 
 
 bounties piled, 
 The wan-eyed bootless bairn the poor, uncared-for 
 
 child. 
 
 Oh! why do we prate of our glory and lightning let- 
 tered fame, 
 
 When the winds of the city roadways are breathing 
 our people's shame? 
 
 And ev'ry castle builded is a hundred homes despoiled 
 
 Our fame leaves the bairn bootless, our glory the hap- 
 less child. 
 
 Then it is ours to labour and help with the passing 
 
 suns, 
 To brighten with word and action the lot of the little 
 
 ones, 
 
 For the sins of our age hang heavy on defiler and defiled, 
 They fall on the bootless bairn, and crush the hapless child.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 33 
 
 THE SONG OF THE CIGARETTE 
 
 (1908) 
 
 There with a Book of verse beneath the Bough, 
 A Flask of Wine, a Loaf of Bread, and Thou, 
 My Woodbine Packet in the Wilderness 
 And Wilderness is Paradise enow. 
 
 OMAR KHAYYAM 
 
 {As he would ivrile to-day.) 
 
 GET thee gone, my erstwhile loved one, I am weary 
 of your sighs, 
 Smothered by your fond embraces, tired gazing in your 
 
 eyes 
 No, I do not want to nurse him Baby, prattling 
 
 little fool 
 Would he were a little older, we would pack him off 
 
 to school 
 No, confound the morning paper, take it from the 
 
 blessed room, 
 
 I am sick of Peer-less Asquith, Crippen, and the Rub- 
 ber Boom. 
 Now the cosy room is quiet, and I hope the world 
 
 will let 
 Me sit down in calm enjoyment to my soothing 
 
 cigarette. 
 
 Let me see what brand will suit me ; ah, it does n't 
 
 matter much, 
 Every cigarette 's a pleasure, so I '11 take one up as 
 
 such; 
 Oh, the delicate aroma! What perfume could e'er 
 
 excel ? 
 Oh, the beautiful tobacco and the life-inspiring smell.
 
 34 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 What is wine, and what is woman? Vanity, the 
 
 preacher says, 
 If there 's vanity in smoking, I am vain for all my 
 
 days. 
 Slightly changed, what says my Kipling? Recollect 
 
 'tis not a joke, 
 What 's a woman ? Just a woman, but a cigarette 's 
 
 a smoke. 
 
 England 's kicking up a racket on the passing of the 
 
 Peers. 
 Let them pass, I care not twopence while this smoke 
 
 goes past my ears; 
 What the mischief am I caring if the German army 
 
 comes, 
 I will smoke in peace and paper 'mid the rolling of 
 
 their drums; 
 
 Let them fly until they 're stupid, man was ever vain, 
 
 I know, 
 Why the reptiles (Latin something) flew ten thousand 
 
 years ago! 
 All the world 's a show of puppets, and the wisest of 
 
 them yet 
 Sits behind the scenes and calmly smokes a Woodbine 
 
 cigarette. 
 
 Let the sickly poet picture scenes from his excited mind, 
 If I 'm left unto my smoking then the gods are very 
 
 kind; 
 
 Let the taxing legislators tax the beer and all the rest, 
 If they spare my gentle Lady then I 'm very surely 
 
 blest ; 
 Makers of the law and sufferers, mankind of whatever 
 
 stamp,
 
 Songs of the Dead End 35 
 
 Prince or pauper, saint or sinner, tyrant, teacher, 
 
 tailor, tramp, 
 Leave me, and I ask for little, but that little I must 
 
 get, 
 Just a cosy spot and silence and a soothing cigarette.
 
 36 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 THE SLUM-CHILD 
 (1909) 
 
 is meeting and parting 
 A The wide world over, 
 
 Day by day, 
 
 Of true hearts and fond hearts, 
 The maid and the lover, 
 And thus alway. 
 
 But never a parting 
 Will give me sorrow, 
 
 And never comes 
 The hope of the friends 
 I '11 meet to-morrow 
 I 'm of the slums. 
 
 Day and night are forever 
 So dreary: 
 
 I never know 
 Aught of a friend, 
 
 When the heart is weary 
 To let him know. 
 
 But often I pray when the 
 Night is gloomy, 
 
 That God would send, 
 In all His mercy, from 
 Heaven to me, 
 
 One loving friend.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 37 
 
 IN THE MIDNIGHT 
 
 A SPLASH on the dusky water, 
 A cry on the winter air, 
 As from the pit abyssmal 
 Rises a soul's despair. 
 
 The human ghouls of midnight 
 Shiver beneath the snow, 
 
 The painted women in terror 
 Stand, and listen, and go. 
 
 Up in the deep of heaven, 
 Gloomy and ghostly grey, 
 
 The cry of the lost one falters 
 Falters, and dies away. 
 
 Only a cry in the darkness, 
 Only a swirl in the tide, 
 
 Only a sinful woman 
 
 Crossing the Great Divide!
 
 38 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 THE CALLING VOICE 
 
 THE great world voice is calling, and the streams 
 have lost their glory, 
 For their restless waters journey to the ever-moving 
 
 sea, 
 
 And I am ever yearning as they seem to breathe a story 
 Of the better things to be, the better things to be. 
 
 The breeze is saying, " Hasten, we will cross the seas 
 
 together, 
 
 You and I together to a fairer world than this, 
 Say, does the mountain keep you and the purple waving 
 
 heather, 
 Or the little girl you kiss, the little girl you kiss? " 
 
 No more the valley charms me, and no more the tor- 
 rents glisten, 
 My love is plain and homely, and my thoughts are 
 
 far away, 
 The great world voice is calling, and with throbbing 
 
 heart I listen, 
 And I cannot but obey, I cannot but obey.
 
 39 
 
 ROAMING 
 
 1 STEADY my staff at the crossroads, it falls with 
 the breeze from the south, 
 I hie to the northern meadows with the kiss of the 
 
 morn on my mouth, 
 The dawn is of opal and ruby, the dew glitters soft on 
 
 my breast, 
 
 And the road lies away o'er the world, and the life of 
 the road is the best. 
 
 The gossamer lies on the greensward like threads made 
 
 of silvery fire, 
 And the breeze in the hedgerows is singing like strains 
 
 of a magical lyre ; 
 There is lure in the woods of the east-land, and health 
 
 in the fields of the west, 
 And the road lieth over the world, and the life of the 
 
 road is the best. 
 
 I steady my staff at the crossroads, it speaks of a south- 
 ern land 
 
 In the winning and wonderful language the staff and 
 myself understand, 
 
 For wherever it falls I will follow, nor question its 
 loving behest, 
 
 For the road runs the wide world over, and the life of 
 the road is the best.
 
 40 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 PADDING IT 
 
 An empty stomach, an empty sack and a long road. 
 
 From Moleskin's Diary. 
 
 HASHING it out like niggers on a two and a 
 tanner sub, 
 Everything sunk with our uncle, little to burn at the 
 
 pub, 
 
 Fifty and six were our hours, and never an extra shift, 
 And whiles we were plunging at banker, and whiles we 
 
 were studying thrift 
 Sewing and patching the trousers, till their parts were 
 
 more than the whole, 
 Tailoring, cobbling, and darning, grubbed on a sausage 
 
 and roll 
 
 Thrift on a fourpenny hour, a matter of nineteen bob, 
 But we glanced askew at the gaffer, and stuck like glue 
 
 to the job, 
 
 We of the soapless legion, we of the hammer and hod, 
 Human swine of the muck-pile, forever forgotten of 
 
 God. 
 
 " Hearing of anything better? " one to another would 
 
 say, 
 As we toiled in all moods of the weather, and cursed at 
 
 the dragging day, 
 Winking the sweat off our lashes, shaking the wet off 
 
 our hair, 
 Wishing to God it was raining, praying to Him it 
 
 would fair.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 41 
 
 " Curse a job in the country," one unto one would 
 
 reply, 
 
 Looking across his shoulder, to see if the boss was by 
 Arrogant March came roaring down on the year, and 
 
 then 
 A rumour spread in the model, and gladdened the 
 
 navvy men. 
 
 Was it the highland slogan? was it the bird of the 
 
 north, 
 Out of its frost-rimmed eyrie that carried the message 
 
 forth? 
 
 " Jackson has need of navvies, the navvies who under- 
 stand 
 The graft of the offside reaches, to labour where God 
 
 has bann'd, 
 Men of the sign of the moleskin who swear by the 
 
 soundless pit, 
 
 Men who are eager for money and hurry in spending it. 
 Bluchers and velvet waistcoats, and kneestraps below 
 
 their knees, 
 The great unwashed of the model Jackson has need 
 
 of these." 
 
 Then the labourer on the railway laughed at the en- 
 gine peals, 
 
 And threw his outworn shovel beneath the flange of the 
 wheels. 
 
 The hammerman at the jumper slung his hammer 
 aside, 
 
 Lifted his lying money and silently did a slide, 
 
 The hod was thrown on the mortar, the spade was 
 flung in the drain, 
 
 The grub was left on the hot-plate, and the navvies 
 were out again.
 
 42 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 All the roads of the Kingdom converged, as it were, to 
 
 one. 
 Which led away to the northward under the dusk and 
 
 dawn, 
 And out on the road we hurried, rugous and worn and 
 
 thin, 
 
 Our cracking joints a-staring out through our parch- 
 ment skin, 
 Some of us trained from our childhood, to swab in the 
 
 slush and muck, 
 Some who were new to the shovel, some who were 
 
 down on their luck, 
 The prodigal son half home-sick, the jail-bird, dodger 
 
 and thief, 
 The chucker-out from the gin shop, the lawyer minus a 
 
 brief, 
 The green hand over from Oir'lan', the sailor tired of 
 
 his ships, 
 
 Some with hair of silver, some with a woman's lips, 
 Old, anaemic, and bilious, lusty, lanky and slim, 
 Padding it, slowly and surely, padding it resolute, grim. 
 
 We dossed it under the heavens, watching the moon 
 
 ashine, 
 
 And a tremor akin to palsy quivering down the spine. 
 We drank of the spring by the roadside using the hands 
 
 for a cup, 
 
 Stole the fowl from the farm before the farmer was up, 
 We lit our fires in the darkness drumming up in the 
 
 flame, 
 Primitive, rude, romantic men who were old at the 
 
 game, 
 On through the palpable darkness, and on through the 
 
 tinted dawn, 
 The line of moleskin and leather fitfully plodded on;
 
 Songs of the Dead End 43 
 
 And no one faltered or weakened, and no one stumbled 
 
 or fell, 
 But now and again they grumbled, saying, " It 's worse 
 
 nor hell." 
 The rain came splattering earthwards, slavering in our 
 
 face, 
 But we never hinted of shelter and never slackened our 
 
 pace, 
 
 The mornings were cool and lightsome, we never hur- 
 ried a bit, 
 
 " Slow and easy is better than hashing and rushing it." 
 Ever the self-same logic, steady, sober and suave 
 " The hasty horse will stumble," " hashing to make 
 
 your grave," 
 " Easy and slow on the jumper, will drive a hole for 
 
 the blast," 
 " Rome was long in the building, but the grandeur of 
 
 Rome is past." 
 
 You speak of the road in your verses, you picture the 
 
 joy of it still, 
 You of the specs and the collars, you who are geese of 
 
 the quill, 
 You pad it along with a wine-flask and your pockets 
 
 crammed with dough, 
 Eat and drink at your pleasure, and write how the 
 
 flowers grow 
 If your stomach was empty as pity, your hobnails were 
 
 down at the heels, 
 And a nor'-easter biting your nose off, then you would 
 
 know how it feels, 
 A nail in the sole of your bluchers jagging your foot 
 
 like a pin, 
 And every step on your journey was driving it further 
 
 in,
 
 44 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 Then, out on the great long roadway, you 'd find when 
 
 you went abroad, 
 The nearer you go to nature the further you go from 
 
 God. 
 
 Through many a sleepy hamlet, and many a noisy town, 
 While eyes of loathing stared us, we who were out and 
 
 down, 
 
 Looking aslant at the wineshop, talking as lovers talk, 
 Of the lure of the gentle schooner, the joy of Carroll's 
 
 Dundalk ; 
 Sometimes bumming a pipeful, sometimes " shooting the 
 
 crow," 1 
 
 But ever onward and onward, fitfully, surely, slow, 
 On to the drill and the jumper, and on to the concrete 
 
 bed, 
 On to the hovel and card school, the dirt-face, and 
 
 slush ahead. 
 
 Thus was the long road followed true is the tale I 
 
 tell, 
 Ask my pals of the model ask, they remember 
 
 well 
 Hear them tell how they tramped it, as they smoke at 
 
 the bar and spit, 
 The journey to Ballachulish, for this is the song of it. 
 
 1 Ordering drink, having no intention of paying for it.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 45 
 
 SERFS 
 
 IN the lands that the leagueless and lonely, where 
 fugitive, funeral-paced, 
 The day drags askance from the darkness to glower on 
 
 the destitute waste, 
 Where raw-ribbed and desolate reaches ruggedly run 
 
 to the sky, 
 Where the grim goring peaks of the mountains sunder 
 
 the heavens on high, 
 Sullen and lowering and livid, furrowless, measureless, 
 
 vast, 
 Pregnant with riches unravished, bearing a recordless 
 
 past, 
 
 Hemmed with the mists of creation, ferine in fury for- 
 lorn, 
 The wilderness reigneth malignant; and who may 
 
 abide by its scorn, 
 Conquer the keeps of its splendour, looting the treasure 
 
 it holds, 
 Damming its turbulent waters, rifling its forests and 
 
 wolds, 
 Bridling its torrents with bridges, its mountain-cliffs 
 
 battering down, 
 Turning its wastes to a garden, moulding its rocks to 
 
 a town, 
 Flouting at famine and failure, sober to suffer and 
 
 serve, 
 Staking their faith against danger in limitless daring 
 
 and nerve,
 
 46 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 Ne'er recking revenge nor repression, throttle the wild 
 
 in its wrath, 
 Breaking the front of resistance unto the uttermost 
 
 path? 
 
 And where shall you gather to dare it, men who are 
 fearless and fit, 
 
 Primed with unquenchable courage, daring with Ber- 
 serkir grit, 
 
 Freed from the cant of the city, purged of fastidious 
 pride 
 
 Men who will strive to a finish, men who are trusted 
 and tried, 
 
 Emboldened by endless endeavour, steel-sinewed, bru- 
 tish and wild 
 
 Men with the tiger's insistence, and faith of an inno- 
 cent child? 
 
 Go, seek them in pub and in model that steam with the 
 stench of their shag, 
 
 Go, gather them up from the slumland and lure of the 
 passionate hag, 
 
 Seek for the men of the highway, ragged, untutored 
 and gaunt, 
 
 Men who can wrestle with horror and jeer at the ter- 
 rors of want. 
 
 So one by one shall you gather them, one by one shall 
 you send 
 
 Them over the pales of the city, where the roads that 
 run outermost end. 
 
 And there in the primitive fastness, more like brutes 
 
 than like men, 
 They 're huddled in rat-riddled cabins, stuck in the 
 
 feculent fen,
 
 47 
 
 Where the red searing heat of the summer purges them 
 
 drier than bone, 
 Where Medusa-faced winter in turn stiffens their 
 
 limbs into stone. 
 Hemmed-up like fleas in the fissures, sweated like swine 
 
 in the silt, 
 
 So that your deserts be conquered, so that your man- 
 sions be built; 
 Hair-poised on the joist or the copestone, and swept by 
 
 the bellowing gales, 
 
 Hauling their burdens of granite, bearing their mortar- 
 piled pails, 
 Pacing the tremulous gang-planks as the trestles are 
 
 bent by the wind, 
 With death and danger before them, and danger and 
 
 death behind. 
 Where torments that terribly threaten engirdle the 
 
 path that they tread, 
 As their bedfellows drop at the jumper, the brains 
 
 blown out of the head, 
 Where misfires, burst in the boring, cripple the men as 
 
 they fly, 
 And the dark-clotted blood on the hammer shall tell 
 
 of the deaths that they die; 
 The eyes that are gouged from their sockets, the scars 
 
 on the cankerous face 
 Of the hairy and horrible human, who drops at the 
 
 quarry's base; 
 The wild arms tossed to the heavens, as the outworks 
 
 crumble beneath, 
 The curse of surprise and of horror that is hissed 
 
 through the closen teeth, 
 The derricks that break at their pivots with the strain 
 
 of the burden they bear, 
 Crushing the men at the windlass before they can utter 
 
 a prayer;
 
 48 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 The dams rushing wild in the darkness, and hurtling 
 
 the flood-gates free, 
 The riotous rain-swollen rivers, that roll like an inland 
 
 sea 
 Swamping the mud-rimed cabins, and breaking them 
 
 up as they run, 
 Where men curse wild in the midnight, and die ere the 
 
 rising sun 
 Die in the rush of the freshets screaming in fury and 
 
 fear, 
 As the timbers crunch in the torrent and jam in the 
 
 glutted weir; 
 There, gulping the chalice of sorrow and chewing the 
 
 crust of despair, 
 Thus do the slaves of the ages labour and dreadfully 
 
 dare, 
 Gripping the forelock of failure and bearing the brunt 
 
 of the fight, 
 For the crumbs that shall feed them at morning, the 
 
 bunks that shall rest them at night. 
 
 And there, stiff-lipped and enduring, stern-eyed, pa- 
 tient and rude, 
 
 Crushing the savage and sinister front of the lean 
 solitude, 
 
 Unto the ultimate barrier, unto the ultimate breath, 
 
 Lashed with the scourge of oppression, swept by the 
 legions of death, 
 
 They stumble like curs by the wayside, are flung in the 
 ditch where they die, 
 
 With never a stone to record them under the pitiless 
 sky; 
 
 Never a singer to chaunt them or tell of the deeds they 
 have done,
 
 Songs of the Dead End 49 
 
 The passionate hates that pursued them, the battles 
 
 they fought in and won 
 How stark as the wilds where they labour, godlike they 
 
 conquer or fall 
 The courage, the dogged endeavour, the glory and woe 
 
 of it all. 
 
 These are our serfs and our bondmen, slighted, for- 
 saken, outcast, 
 
 Hewing the path of the future, heirs of the wrongs of 
 the past, 
 
 Forespent in the vanguard of progress, vagrant, un- 
 tutored, unskilled, 
 
 Labouring for ever and ever, so that our bellies be 
 filled, 
 
 Building the homes of the haughty, rearing the man- 
 sions of worth 
 
 Wanderers lost to the wide world, hell-harried slaves 
 of the earth, 
 
 Visionless, dreamless, and voiceless children of worry 
 and care, 
 
 Sweltering, straining and striving under the burdens 
 they bear 
 
 Stretches the future before them clouded and bleak as 
 their past 
 
 They are our serfs and our brothers, slighted, for- 
 saken, outcast.
 
 50 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 LOVE 
 
 They sin who tell us love can die. SOUTHEY. 
 
 LOVE will live while the pale stars glow, while the 
 world shall last, 
 On the present hopes, and in hours of woe, on a dreamy 
 
 past, 
 Love will live, while the flowers bloom, and the 
 
 meadows wave; 
 Nor yet be quenched by the charnel tomb the 
 
 ghastly grave; 
 For o'er the tomb and the silver stars, to the gates 
 
 above 
 The soul will seek in the great Afar the Endless Love.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 51 
 
 PLAYED OUT 
 
 AS a bullock falls in the crooked ruts, he fell when 
 the day was o'er, 
 The hunger gripping his stinted guts, his body shaken 
 
 and sore. 
 They pulled it out of the ditch in the dark, as a brute 
 
 is pulled from its lair, 
 
 The corpse of the navvy, stiff and stark, with the 
 clay on its face and hair. 
 
 In Christian lands, with calloused hands, he laboured 
 
 for others' good, 
 In workshop and mill, ditchway and drill, earnest, 
 
 eager and rude ; 
 Unhappy and gaunt with worry and want, a food to 
 
 the whims of fate, 
 Hashing it out and booted about at the will of the 
 
 goodly and great. 
 
 To him was applied the scorpion lash, for him the gibe 
 
 and the goad 
 The roughcast fool of our moral wash, the rugous 
 
 wretch of the road. 
 Willing to crawl for a pittance small to the swine of 
 
 the tinsel sty, 
 Beggared and burst from the very first, he chooses the 
 
 ditch to die 
 . . . Go, pick the dead from the sloughy bed, and hide 
 
 him from mortal eye.
 
 52 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 He tramped through the colourless winter land, or 
 
 swined in the scorching heat, 
 The dry skin hacked on his sapless hands or blistering 
 
 on his feet; 
 He wallowed in mire unseen, unknown, where your 
 
 houses of pleasure rise, 
 And hapless, hungry, and chilled to the bone, he builded 
 
 the edifice. 
 
 In cheerless model and filthy pub, his sinful hours were 
 
 passed, 
 Or footsore, weary, he begged his grub, in the sough 
 
 of the hail-whipped blast, 
 So some might riot in wealth and ease, with food and 
 
 wine be crammed, 
 He wrought like a mule, in muck to the knees, dirty, 
 
 dissolute, damned. 
 
 Arrogant, adipose, you sit in the homes he builded 
 
 high; 
 Dirty the ditch, in the depths of it he chooses a spot to 
 
 die, 
 Foaming with nicotine-tainted lips, holding his aching 
 
 breast, 
 Dropping down like a cow that slips, smitten with 
 
 rinderpest ; 
 Drivelling yet of the work and wet, swearing as sinners 
 
 swear, 
 Raving the rule of the gambling school, mixing it up 
 
 with a prayer. 
 
 He lived like a brute, as the navvies live, and went as 
 the cattle go,
 
 53 
 
 No one to sorrow and no one to shrive, for heaven or- 
 dained it so 
 
 He handed his check to the shadow in black, and went 
 to the misty lands, 
 
 Never a mortal to close his eyes or a woman to cross 
 his hands. 
 
 As a bullock falls in the rugged ruts 
 
 He fell when the day was o'er. 
 Hunger gripping his weasened guts, 
 
 But never to hunger more 
 They pulled it out of the ditch in the dark, 
 
 The chilling frost on its hair, 
 The mole-skinned navvy stiff and stark 
 
 From no particular where.
 
 54 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 THE WOE OF IT 
 
 SWEET was the mavis' song of eld, 
 And how the woodlands thrilled with it! 
 Sweeter the song of the girl I held 
 Close to the heart that filled with it. 
 
 Methinks the rose leant from the wall 
 
 To kiss the lily brow of hers; 
 And through the years I can recall 
 
 The softly whispered vow of hers. 
 
 We saw the evening fade afar, 
 
 And parting, never met again ; 
 And ere we meet, how many a star 
 
 Shall rise again and set again. 
 
 The mavis' song but brings regret, 
 The fading rose must know of it: 
 
 For she is gone I can't forget, 
 And ah ! the bitter woe of it I
 
 Songs of the Dead End 55 
 
 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 THE white road leads through the meadows, on 
 through the sunshine and shadows, 
 The endless road to anywhere, the road the navvy 
 
 knows ; 
 Where the mountains soar in their starkness, piercing 
 
 the light and the darkness, 
 
 The thin road lies like a ribbon, he follows it where 
 it goes. 
 
 He has seen the dewdrops cluster where modest daisies 
 
 muster, 
 He has lain on earth's soft bosom, watched by the 
 
 Milky Way, 
 Out in the places lonely, with the stars and the silence 
 
 only, 
 
 Chilled with the hate of Winter, warmed with the 
 love of May. 
 
 He has padded alone, while the vagrant breezes bore 
 
 him the fragrant 
 Scent of the wayside flowers, or blooms from the 
 
 hills afar, 
 He has listened the torrents grumble at the hills from 
 
 which they tumble, 
 
 He has seen the soft night kneeling to greet the even- 
 ing star. 
 
 Tired of the reeking hovel, weary of pick and shovel, 
 He wanders out on the white road in the evening's 
 sheen of gold,
 
 56 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 Watching the light that "dims on the western hills of 
 
 crimson, 
 
 And longs for the last lone slumber and knows he is 
 growing old. 
 
 He goes from the ones who knew him, those who were 
 
 kindly to him, 
 
 Out on the lonely roadway, under the starlit dome, 
 And follows the path that flies on into the dim horizon 
 Where the spectral moon-fire lies on the road that 
 leads to home.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 57 
 
 HAVE YOU 
 
 ( On the road to Kinlochleven, 1908.) 
 
 HAVE you tramped about in Winter, when your 
 boots were minus soles? 
 
 Have you wandered sick and sorry with your pockets 
 full of holes? 
 
 Have you wondered which was better, when your capi- 
 tal was light, 
 
 A plate of fish and taters, or a hammock for the night ? 
 
 Have you smelt the dainty odour of some swell re- 
 freshment shop, 
 
 When you 'd give your soul in barter for a single 
 mouldy chop? 
 
 Have you sought through half the kingdom for the job 
 you could not get? 
 
 Have you eyed the city gutters for a stump of 
 cigarette ? 
 
 Have you dossed in drear December on a couch of 
 virgin snow 
 
 With a quilt of frost above you and a sheet of ice 
 below ? 
 
 These are incidental worries which are wrong to fuss 
 
 about ; 
 But God ! they matter greatly to the man who 's down 
 
 and out. 
 
 Have you sweltered through the Summer, till the salt 
 
 sweat seared your eyes? 
 Have you dragged through plumb-dead levels in the 
 
 slush that reached your thighs? 
 Have you worked the weighty hammer swinging heavy 
 
 from the hips,
 
 58 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 While the ganger timed the striking with a curse upon 
 
 his lips? 
 Have you climbed the risky gang-plank where a bird 
 
 might fear to stop, 
 And reckoned twenty fathoms would be hellish far to 
 
 drop? 
 
 Have you swept the clotted point-rods and the red- 
 dened reeking cars 
 That have dragged a trusty comrade through the 
 
 twisted signal bars? 
 Have you seen the hooded signal, as it swung above 
 
 you clear, 
 And the deadly engine rushing on the mate who 
 
 did n't hear? 
 
 If you want to prove your manhood. in the way the 
 
 navvies do, 
 
 These are just the little trifles that are daily up to you. 
 And if you have n't shared the risk, the worry and 
 
 the strife, 
 Disappointment, and the sorrow, then you know not 
 
 what is life. 
 
 Have you padded through the country when the Sum- 
 mer land was fair, 
 
 And the white road lay before you leading on just any- 
 where ? 
 
 Have you seen the dusk grow mellow, and the break- 
 ing morn grow red, 
 
 And the little diamond dew-drops come to sentinel 
 your bed? 
 
 Though your clothes were rather shabby, and your toes 
 and knees were bare, 
 
 The little silly birdies sure they did n't seem to care ;
 
 Songs of the Dead End 59 
 
 But just sang to cheer your journey, as they would to 
 
 cheer a prince, 
 For they saw old Adam naked, and they know no 
 
 better since. 
 
 Have you slouched along the meadows, have you smelt 
 
 the new-mown hay? 
 Have you smoked your pipe and loved it as you plodded 
 
 on the way? 
 Have you bummed your bit of tucker from the matron 
 
 at the door 
 And blessed the kindly woman who had pity on the 
 
 poor? 
 
 A pipe of strong tobacco (if you get it) after meals 
 And there 's many a scrap of comfort for the man 
 
 who 's down at heels. 
 
 Have you felt your blood go rushing, and your heart 
 
 beat strangely high, 
 As the smoke of your tobacco curled upwards to the 
 
 sky, _ 
 When lying 'neath a spreading tree that shaded from 
 
 the sun 
 The happiest mortal in the land, it dared not shine 
 
 upon. 
 If you have n't shared the pleasure, that follows after 
 
 strife, 
 You do not know the happiness that fills a navvy's life.
 
 60 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 THE SONG OF THE DRAINER 
 
 (On Toward Mountain, 1907.) 
 
 HE is the Drainer. 
 Out on the moorland bleak and grey, using his 
 spade in a primitive way, through chilly evening and 
 searing day. Call him a fool, and well you may 
 
 He is the Drainer. 
 
 The toil of the Drainer. 
 
 Only the simple work to do, to plod and delve the 
 quagmire through, for thirty pence, his daily screw. 
 The labour is healthy but not for you, 
 
 Just for the Drainer. 
 
 The artless Drainer. 
 
 It does n't require a lot of skill to dig with a spade 
 or hammer a drill, but it 's bad enough for a man when 
 ill with fevery bones or a wintry chill 
 
 Even a Drainer. 
 
 The home of the Drainer. 
 
 A couple of stakes shoved into the ground, a hole for 
 a window, a roof tree crowned with rushes and straw, 
 and all around a waste where lichens and weeds abound. 
 Is the home of the Drainer. 
 
 The rugged Drainer. 
 
 The sleepy bog breezes chant their hymn, the rushes 
 and lilies are soft and slim, the deep dark pools the sun- 
 beams limn but what do these beauties matter to 
 him 
 
 The rugged Drainer?
 
 Songs of the Dead End 61 
 
 The poor old Drainer. 
 
 Some day he '11 pass away in a cramp, where the 
 sundews gleam and the bogbines ramp, and go like a 
 ghost from the drag and the damp the poor old slave 
 of the dismal swamp. 
 
 The hapless Drainer. 
 
 Such is the Drainer. 
 
 Voiceless slave of the solitude, rude as the draining 
 shovel is rude Man by the ages of wrong subdued, 
 marred, misshapen, misunderstood 
 
 Such is the Drainer.
 
 62 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 THE BALLAD OF MACINDOE 
 
 MACINDOE was a Scotchman had other fail- 
 ings, too, 
 
 Unco sour and moody, hankered as Scotchmen do 
 After the gill almighty bibulous Maclndoe! 
 
 Out on a steamer southward breasting a heavy swell, 
 The captain roared, " To the lifeboats," Maclndoe 
 
 roared " To H ," 
 
 And stood by a whiskey barrel aboard of the Heather 
 
 Bell. 
 
 Out in the teeth of the swirling, ranting, riotous sea, 
 The yardarms battered to larboard, the hatchways 
 
 shattered to lee 
 (Something like that he told me the cook of the 
 
 Buzzy Bee.) 
 
 The Bell went this way and that way, forward and 
 
 back again, 
 Then sank on the seething billows, leaving poor Mac 
 
 alane, 
 Perched on a whiskey barrel out on the Spanish main. 
 
 But his was a courage undaunted, courage that never 
 
 could fail, 
 He placed himself up for a mainmast, spread out his 
 
 coat for a sail, 
 And wondering where he was going, he drifted before 
 
 the gale.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 63 
 
 On to his slippery foothold grimly and gaunt he clung, 
 Till daybreak its shafts of carmine over the waters 
 
 flung 
 " Noo," said the thirsty sailor, " I think I '11 tak' oot 
 
 the bung." 
 
 But the plans o' a moose or sailor gang aften times 
 
 agley, 
 And you '11 hardly open a barrel, labour and tug as 
 
 you may, 
 Out on the frivolous ocean in the old methodical way. 
 
 So Sandy found to his terror, and cursed his luckless 
 
 star, 
 That poor benighted, sweating, swearing, sorrowing 
 
 tar, 
 Who murmured loud in his anguish, " So near and yet 
 
 so far." 
 
 He watched the languid ocean in leisurely wavelets 
 
 roll; 
 The fiery sun in the heaven was scorching his very 
 
 soul 
 " Oh, for a raft of an iceberg, near tae the Arctic 
 
 Pole." 
 
 He seated himself on his barrel and pondered on Auld 
 
 Lang Syne, 
 Brose and bannocks and Burns, water and women and 
 
 wine, 
 Then scooped up the waves of the ocean, and drank of 
 
 the arid brine. 
 
 Below the sensuous waters, above him the heavens 
 grim
 
 64 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 What was it rose for a moment ominous, vague and 
 dim? 
 
 Maclndoe shuddered in horror a shark was follow- 
 ing him ! 
 
 Night came dreary and darkling, he saw the cleaving 
 
 fin 
 Of the fish draw near and nearer, ugly and fell as 
 
 sin 
 " God," said the shivering sailor, " such a fix to be in ! " 
 
 He tore his coat to ribbons and lashed himself to his 
 
 raft, 
 Slept, and dreamt of devils, woke from his sleep and 
 
 laughed, 
 There was the sign of the monster slowly following aft. 
 
 The moon was up in the heavens ghastly, gibbous and 
 
 wan, 
 
 But not as pale as the lonely, sorrowful, sinful mon, 
 Who, tied to a whiskey barrel, waited till day would 
 
 dawn. 
 
 Day and the young day's blushes spread away to the 
 
 rear, 
 The man stood up on his timbers and feared with a 
 
 deadly fear, 
 There was the fin of the monster ever approaching near. 
 
 Opal and ruby and diamond glimmered the eastern 
 
 sky, 
 And the waters that circled the barrel laughed to the 
 
 sun on high, 
 " Christ ! " and the sailor shuddered, " a beautiful 
 
 day to die."
 
 Songs of the Dead End 65 
 
 He thought of the mother who bore him, he thought 
 
 of the homely croft, 
 Where the heath of the hill was purple, the grass of 
 
 the field was soft, 
 Then he looked to the sky above him, and thought of 
 
 the God aloft. 
 
 He ventured to kneel to heaven and pray for a drop of 
 
 rain, 
 His knees were creaking and aching, he moaned as a 
 
 child in pain, 
 But found he forgot what the words were, and rose to 
 
 his feet again. 
 
 Down in the deep below him he saw the sword fish 
 
 swim, 
 The weird uncanny spectres rise from their caverns 
 
 dim, 
 But one still stayed on the surface waiting he knew for 
 
 him. 
 
 Morning and night and morning, light and darkness 
 
 and light, 
 Hungry when stars were beaming, thirsty when noon 
 
 was bright, 
 Hungry and tired and thirsty and Heavens, a sail 
 
 in sight! 
 
 They picked him up from the ocean, the grinning, gib- 
 bering Gael, 
 
 Nude as a nymph on his barrel, using his shirt for a 
 sail 
 
 Thus they told it to me on the Buzzy Bee, 
 
 But I never believed the tale.
 
 66 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 THE SONG OF MALONEY 
 
 THEY are gambling in the cabin, Moleskin Joe, 
 Magee and Dan, 
 
 There 's a splash of stagnant crimson on the lance- 
 edged hills afar 
 
 I Ve a whiff of good tobacco, and a bucket in the can, 
 And a sort of fawning liking for the trembling 
 
 evening star, 
 And my thoughts go roaming, roaming, like an exile's 
 
 in the gloaming, 
 Through the grey fogs of the valley and the cloud 
 
 wreaths of the hill, 
 
 And I think I see her yet, where in olden days we met, 
 Awaiting at the corner for her bloke returning still. 
 
 Moleskin's plunging bob and tanner, he would call me 
 
 such a fool 
 If he knew what I was thinking in the heel-end of 
 
 the day, 
 But somehow I cannot help it, and I cannot bear the 
 
 school, 
 For my thoughts are ever running to a maiden miles 
 
 away, 
 To a maiden hellish pretty, in the dirty, smoky 
 
 city, 
 Poor as me she is, and poorer, but a year or two 
 
 ago, 
 Ere I came to swine in muck where all nature 's down 
 
 on luck, 
 She was more to me I reckon than anyone I know.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 67 
 
 O'er the dam, across the breastworks, drops the night 
 
 and fills the land, 
 There are lights inside the cabin, there are many at 
 
 the game, 
 
 But away down in the city does she ever under- 
 stand 
 The reason that I 'm lagging, and the why I never 
 
 came ? 
 Maybe she 's forgot about me, plodding on her own 
 
 without me, 
 I the roughest card among us, I the plunger at the 
 
 school, 
 And the pallid evening star whispers, " Idiot that you 
 
 are ! 
 
 Do you really think she wants you, you a whiskey- 
 sodden fool? " 
 
 Down behind the mountain ridges, grave-like valleys 
 
 gulp the night, 
 Far below the grave-like valleys lies the town of 
 
 which I dream, 
 With its many lamps aglitter, and the music halls 
 
 alight, 
 And the galleries are crowded, and the footlights 
 
 are agleam, 
 And perhaps the actress singing, some fond memories is 
 
 bringing 
 Of the kisses in the alley, and the softly whispered 
 
 vow 
 Here I 'm dreaming miles away, she is sitting at the 
 
 play, 
 
 Maybe thinking kindly of me as I 'm thinking of her 
 now.
 
 68 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 And the photo that she gave me, on the lonely night 
 
 we parted 
 I have lost it, 't was the night we tried to clear the 
 
 McSurly's bar 
 
 " Come, Maloney, fill the school up " Well, when- 
 ever you have started 
 On the downward road, its smoother than the other 
 
 road by far 
 All right, Carroty, I 'm willing, I have got an extra 
 
 shilling 
 Mary Somers, oh, she 's hooked up by some collared 
 
 city chap, 
 But perhaps I '11 meet her yet, for somehow I can't 
 
 forget 
 
 Shut up, Moleskin, here I 'm coming, is it banker, 
 brag, or nap ?
 
 Songs of the Dead End 69 
 
 BAD NEWS 
 
 (McSurly's Bar.) 
 He hugged a delusion in petticoats. MOLESKIN. 
 
 " WOUR flame is marri'd I understand," 
 
 X He heard the man from the city say, 
 He dealt the flats with a shaky hand * 
 
 And clean forgot the manner of play; 
 I saw his eyelids quiver a bit, 
 
 And Big Maloney was never a saint, 
 He played the game, made a mess of it, 
 
 Yet his partner saw it without complaint. 
 
 He shoved the ringers to beat the four, 
 
 And led the queen for another's ace, 
 Then jacked his hand and staked no more, 
 
 So Carroty Dan took up his place. 
 He sat apart on the wooden seat 
 
 Pulling a clay that was not alight, 
 Shaking his head, and shuffling his feet 
 
 Maloney was out of sorts that night. 
 
 I noticed the lines on his haggard face, 
 
 I heard him sigh. We played the game 
 " Moleskin, lead." He led the ace ; 
 
 Carroty Dan had the Jack for the same. 
 Some muttered : " There 's more fish in the sea," 
 
 And others remarked : " A maid 's a maid," 
 " There is n't another girl for me," 
 
 Was all that Big Maloney said. 
 
 1 He becometh poor who dealeth with a slack hand. - 
 Prov. x., 4.
 
 70 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 Poor Maloney! And still we played 
 
 " Where, M'Kay, is the trump you gave? " 
 " Well, it is queer," another said, 
 
 " I thought he 'd play on his mother's grave." 
 But Jim Maloney was looking sad, 
 
 Another fellow had hooked his flame, 
 And some remarked, " Is it not too bad ? " 
 
 As we shuffled the cards and played the game.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 71 
 
 THE PASSING OF MALONEY 
 
 IN the chill of anaemic December when the snow on 
 the ditchway lay, 
 He bursted the jaw of the gaffer, in an argumentative 
 
 way 1 
 
 Got handed his couple of shillings and went in the 
 evening grey 
 
 Into the dip of the hollow a moving speck on the snow, 
 Bound for the township and model, eighty miles off 
 
 or so, 
 And his comrades leaned on their shovels, and sorrowed 
 
 to see him go. 
 
 That night they kept from the card school, and smoked 
 
 in silence apart, 
 Swore at the cloud-drift, and listened the night winds 
 
 fitfully start, 
 And felt a chill in the marrow or an icy grip on the 
 
 heart. 
 
 Quickly he padded the mountain, and dragged thro' 
 the desolate vale, 
 
 And over the gap-toothed ridges, where the flaccid sun- 
 sets fail, 
 
 And the endless cumulus musters glaucous or flaxen 
 pale. 
 
 1 The opinion of the man who argues with his fist is always 
 respected. From the Diary of Moleskin Joe.
 
 72 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 Broad-chested, lank Maloney, muscular, strong and 
 
 wild, 
 A Berserkir fierce in his anger, simple in faith as a 
 
 child, 
 The primitive human in moleskin, uncultured and 
 
 undefiled. 
 
 Crunching and crushing the snow-way, cursing his 
 
 luck when he fell, 
 He plodded unweary, unfearing, by quagmire and tarn 
 
 and well, 
 And a star o'erhead where the cloudrift spread gleamed 
 
 like an asphodel, 
 
 Gleamed for a tremulous moment, fading as soon as 
 it shone, 
 
 Leaving him lost in the vastness of night and its by- 
 ways unknown, 
 
 With a charnel gloominess girded, affrighted, astray 
 and alone. 
 
 Otiose, obdurate, ominous, drifted the snow in the air, 
 Gibingly, grim, geomantic, tracing the lines of despair, 
 Weaving a shroud for his body, shaping a wreath for 
 his hair. 
 
 " Where am I straying to anyhow ? Cold ! I am cold 
 
 to the skin. . . . 
 Lord, he 's a hell of a gaffer ! . . how did the quarrel 
 
 begin? 
 Called me an imp of the devil, and managed to get me 
 
 my tin.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 73 
 
 " I 'm sure I am lost in the darkness ain't it a hor- 
 rible fix, 
 
 Knowing your final is coming. . . . Curse him, the 
 imp of old Nick's. 
 
 Every foot that I 'm lifting drags like a bundle of 
 bricks. 
 
 " I 'm padding it round in a circle round in a circle 
 
 and round. . . . 
 To-morrow they '11 search and they '11 find me, dead 
 
 like a brute on the ground. 
 Dead ! . . 'T is the corpse of Maloney, Moleskin will 
 
 say when I 'm found. 
 
 " Mary, the girl that I courted how under hell can 
 
 it be 
 There she 's smiling . . . she 's calling, calling and 
 
 beckoning me! 
 Look at the swarm of demons and grinning like 
 
 blazes they be. 
 
 " Shoving it on to a fellow, 'cause you are boss of the 
 
 show. . . . 
 Here I am raving and raving, wandering round in the 
 
 snow, 
 Going to hell in a blizzard well, it is time I should 
 
 go! 
 
 " Drinks to the bar and I '11 stand it, everyone here in 
 
 the place. . . . 
 Turn a man off in the snow-drift go, or I '11 batter 
 
 your face. . . . 
 Matey, my turn at the hammer I 'm for a bob on 
 
 the ace."
 
 74 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 He jacked up his soul in the darkness, and slept in an 
 
 angel white shroud, 
 And the ghouls of the moorland kept litchwake under 
 
 the canopied cloud, 
 When nature was yelling in anguish and the turbulent 
 
 tempest was loud.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 75 
 
 THE GRAVE DIGGER 
 
 I spoke to a man once; asking what he thought of going back 
 to the land and having small holdings. " Very good," he said, 
 " in fact the solution of all ills." 
 
 Afterwards I learned that he was a grave-digger. 
 
 From " Gleanings from a Navvy's Scrap-Book." 
 
 If some people rose from the dead and read their epitaphs they 
 would think they had got into the wrong graves! 
 
 MOLESKIN JOE. 
 
 A GRIM old man with a weazened visage 
 What does he dream of toiling there? 
 Rest should be meet for a man of his age, 
 Old and weary but who may care? 
 There, when the dawn's bright pennon waves, 
 There, when the fleeting eve fails dimly, 
 Aloof and alone he labours grimly, 
 Earning a living, digging graves. 
 
 So much a grave, and a soul 's in Heaven : 
 So much a grave, and a soul 's in Hell : 
 For old-world death makes matters even, 
 The sexton profits, and all is well. 
 All is well but the lover raves, 
 And tears are wet on the downcast lashes. 
 " Dust to dust, and ashes to ashes," 
 Ponders the sexton, digging graves. 
 
 Some go into the House of Pleasure, 
 Some go into the House of Gloom ; 
 The miser hoards up his garnered treasure, 
 The treasure the rust and moth consume.
 
 76 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 Alas! for the wealth the miser saves, 
 In the House of Pain or the House of Passion. 
 " He '11 need it not in the House I fashion " 
 Chuckles the sexton, digging graves. 
 
 All are his tenants, lord and lady, 
 
 Villain and harlot of low degree, 
 
 Simpering saint, and sinner shady, 
 
 Every manner of companie, 
 
 Their homes with brainless skulls he paves, 
 
 Lily white as alabaster. 
 
 " Even the brainless know I 'm master," 
 
 Muses the sexton, digging graves. 
 
 But there he labours, the cynic sexton, 
 
 For all men toil and the sexton must; 
 
 Waiting betimes for the silent next one, 
 
 Next not last, to the House of dust. 
 
 This is the Home of squires and slaves, 
 
 Still from the hall, and stiff from the hovel. 
 
 " I '11 house them alike with my pick and shovel," 
 
 Chuckles the sexton, digging graves.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 77 
 
 A SPRING IDYLL 
 
 ON my hangings of arras 
 Dewdrop and sunlight commingle, 
 The music of woods that are endless, 
 And infinite seas 
 
 That come with the voices 
 Of storm or of calm to the shingle 
 In the lilac grey blush of the dawn, 
 On the sensuous breeze. 
 
 So full of promise is earth 
 As a child's gentle laughter, 
 The sapphire tints of the water 
 Are fair to the eyes 
 The present is only, 
 I know not a past nor hereafter, 
 And forth from my covering 
 Of saffron and ermine I rise.
 
 78 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 MY DREAM GIRL 
 
 LIKE a flower in the mist of the moorland, spectral, 
 shadowy, 
 Is she the girl of my dreamings, simple and fawn-like 
 
 shy; 
 Hers the ethereal radiance of heavenly groves and 
 
 streams ; 
 Such as the painter pictures, such as the poet dreams. 
 
 Out in the open spaces she beckons my spirit on, 
 She that is born of evening, and fades in the lilac dawn. 
 She comes from the ports of the flaxen moon on one of 
 
 the spirit ships, 
 Her tresses are night's abysses, the red rose gleams on 
 
 her lips, 
 Through the soft, impalpable ether she has ordered her 
 
 ship to go, 
 By Peristan of the musk-winds, where snow-white spice 
 
 flowers blow; 
 On the manes of the crooning breezes, by fairy lands 
 
 untold, 
 She comes in the guise of a mortal, who never groweth 
 
 old; 
 Through the tangle of gossamer silver the bow of her 
 
 vessel cleaves, 
 And the moonlight opens before it with a rustle of 
 
 willow leaves, 
 Down to the fringe of the moorland where the land 
 
 and the heavens meet, 
 Where the quivering bloom of the heather presses to 
 
 kiss her feet,
 
 Songs of the Dead End 79 
 
 Prankt in a robe of star-mist tinged with its many 
 
 dyes. 
 And I watch as a lover watches till the transient vision 
 
 flies 
 The mystic girl of my dreamings, simple and fawn-like 
 
 shy, 
 The flower in the mist of the moorland, lonesome and 
 
 shadowy.
 
 8o Songs of the Dead End 
 
 LOGIC 
 
 " "DALMAM quf meruit ferat " he who wins the 
 JL palm should bear it, for I certainly admit, 
 
 Being but the super-navvy, burdened with the hod, 
 vous-savez, I Ve no wish to carry it. 
 
 I don't pose as one who knows an awful lot about 
 Spinoza, or some other ancient seer, 
 
 I don't wear a sort of faintly dawning, growing, super- 
 saintly imitation of a sneer, 
 
 But withal I Ve a prolific knowledge of the scientific 
 which I Ve picked up here and there, 
 
 And a little super-added from the lore of those who 
 pad it on the road to anywhere. 
 
 In my knockabout existence, on the line of least re- 
 sistance, I have plodded day by day, 
 
 And of course from the beginning I have done a lot of 
 sinning in a very vulgar way, 
 
 And you '11 find I 'm no exception in aesthetical percep- 
 tion of the art that lies in lies, 
 
 So each item of my tale is to be read, cum grano salis, 
 as it will, since ye are wise. 
 
 Here a man lays money by him. My life's rule is 
 
 " Carpe diem," and at last a day will be 
 When they '11 gladly write, " Hie Jacet," on a marble 
 
 slab and place it over him ; but as for me, 
 Everyone can do without me, no one cares a damn 
 
 about me, no one 's sorry when I slide 
 But it is a trifle funny, when he 's dead, the man of 
 
 money, someone 's hellish satisfied.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 81 
 
 I am one of those who know it, it takes more to make 
 
 a poet than a mass of flowing hair, 
 I have tried the thing already, so my friend, " Experto 
 
 crede," listen to me and beware. 
 Homer was a parish beggar, Burns had to measure 
 
 lager, or some other beverage, 
 Poor old Villon had to take a jemmy in his hand to 
 
 make an ill-begotten living wage 
 What 's the good of writing of the stars and skies that 
 
 are above the world you rhyme upon so well 
 Rhyme in sentimental gushes of your Angelina's blushes 
 
 if your verses do not sell ? 
 
 I have read Montaigne and Dante in the dead end or 
 the shanty, which you '11 certainly agree 
 
 May be due in greatest measure to the economic pres- 
 sure and the hurried times that be 
 
 " Otium cum dignitate," for some problem rather 
 weighty, certainly I Ve never had, 
 
 For you '11 find it hard to learn, all the views of Kant 
 or Sterne, hashing on the barrow squad 
 
 But apart from that the fact is, if you put it into prac- 
 tice, put your knowledge into rhyme, 
 
 Do it up as this is done up, spin it up as this is spun 
 up, you are scoring every time. 
 
 There are lots of folks who clamour that the man who 
 strikes the hammer, cannot, though he likes to, rise 
 
 From the squalor of the masses to the glory of Par- 
 nassus, which I might remark is lies 
 
 'Tis a pretty wide expansion from the muckpile to the 
 mansion, some, and many still may rave, 
 
 Yet they know (at least they ought to) that tho' far 
 removed it 's not too far from either to the grave.
 
 82 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 I have taken oft the oddest little moment for a modest 
 glance at Tolstoy or at Taine, 
 
 While the boss was kicking hell up I Ve been trying to 
 develop the resources of my brain, 
 
 Or when burst as burst at nap I meditated quite un- 
 happy on the lore of ancient fools, 
 
 On some grim platonic sages who had never lost their 
 wages in the fishy gambling schools, 
 
 On the white road leading through the land of " No one 
 wants you," to the land of " What you should 
 have done," 
 
 I have plodded day and daily, sometimes woeful, some- 
 times gaily, brother of the wind and sun, 
 
 For companions I have taken Shakespeare, Old 
 
 Khayyam, or Bacon and have sat beneath the 
 
 bough, 
 But no loaf and flask was near me, so old Bacon 
 
 could n't cheer me Shakespeare had forgotten 
 
 how 
 Though a lack of education makes one lack appreciation 
 
 of the greatest minds of earth, 
 Still you '11 find that ne'er a rub is harder borne than 
 
 lack of grub is, while you estimate their worth. 
 
 If a man says, " Gee up, Neddy," in uncultured words 
 
 and ready, suffer him and let him pass, 
 " Proceed, Edward " is so toffish that it seems a little 
 
 offish, when you say it to an ass 
 So I hope my wisdom scraps will be esteemed but 
 
 they perhaps will be regarded just as lies, 
 And remember that my tale is to be read, " cum grano 
 
 salis," as it will, for you are wise.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 83 
 
 BOREAS 
 
 HE threw the pine tree in the fiord, 
 And down the spumous seas he hurled 
 The jagged iceberg of the north 
 
 To languish in a stagnant world, 
 And o'er the highway of the skies 
 The clouds impetuously whirled. 
 
 Upon the bald, blank hill we met, 
 He blustered in insensate wrath, 
 
 He caught and flung me like a child, 
 He shook and bent me like a lath, 
 
 Because I dared to flaunt his power, 
 Because I ventured on his path. 
 
 " Zephyrus, Eurus, Africus, 
 
 Boreas, Auster, Aquilo, 
 Or one or all, I know not which, 
 
 And care not though I do not know, 
 Why use your means to work me harm? 
 
 And bash and birl and bend me so? 
 
 " The flashing lightnings pierce you through, 
 
 You bluster vainly at the hill, 
 Ten thousand times you beat his crest, 
 
 Ten million, and he flaunts you still; 
 You are the fettered slave of man, 
 
 You bow obedient to his will."
 
 84 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 " You you unblushingly you rave 
 Of all the pigmy deeds of men 
 
 I Ve swept across the clay that was 
 Or Paladin or Saracen, 
 
 When naked Adam blushed for shame 
 I gloried in my starkness then ! 
 
 " I saw the might of Babylon, 
 
 I saw the verdant fields of Thrace, 
 
 I marked the Romans in their power, 
 
 I Ve seen them in their dire disgrace 
 
 I am ; they were, and Caesar now 
 Can't wipe the maggot off his face. 
 
 " Where is the glory that was Greece? 
 
 Let Athens' crumbling walls reply 
 Where is the pride of Nineveh, 
 
 Thou shivering fool of destiny? 
 Between the earth and sky I Ve borne 
 
 The ashes that were Pompeii ! 
 
 " What is the pride you rave of worth ? 
 
 What are the things that you have done? 
 Are all your deeds of deathless fame 
 
 From David to Napoleon, 
 A musty coffin full of dust, 
 
 A grimly grinning skeleton? 
 
 " I bear the scent of briar and rose 
 Through all the lover-longed-for June, 
 
 I hurl the death-black clouds athwart 
 The silvern oceans of the moon, 
 
 I am Siroc and Harmattan, 
 Solano, Mistral, and Simoon.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 85 
 
 " Upon the proud Armada I 
 
 Came vengeful and in dreadful shape, 
 
 I drove its ships through goaded seas 
 Where slimy-walled the fissures gape 
 
 In many a gloomy, deadly bluff, 
 In many a chasmed, tusk-edged cape. 
 
 ' The ringed and sworded buccaneers, 
 They blessed me in the siren breeze, 
 
 I lured the Vikings wild and rude 
 Across the icy northern seas, 
 
 And then I laughed their faith to scorn, 
 And swept their laden argosies. 
 
 " Beyond the reaches of the stars, 
 
 Impearled byways of the night, 
 In dark abyssmal zarahs, far 
 
 I Ve ventured on my endless flight, 
 Beyond the thrones of gods unknown, 
 
 And margents of the infinite." 
 
 He came I wist not whence, nor where, 
 
 The bluster ready on his lip, 
 He fled, and left me wondering, 
 
 Impotent, helpless, from his grip 
 Despite it all, I felt with him 
 
 A sort of roving fellowship.
 
 86 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 THE NAVVY CHORUS 1 
 
 TWAS in the beginning of ages, 
 To the make of the navvy there came 
 Work and the lowest of wages 
 
 Ever a mortal could claim, 
 Bread, with its age for leaven, 
 
 Rows, and the prison cell, 
 Few of the gifts of heaven, 
 
 And most of the vices of hell, 
 Time, and dislike to do it, 
 
 Love, for the wine when red, 
 And a bibulous leaning to it 
 
 Despite what the sages said. 
 
 And the demons took in hand 
 
 Moleskin, leather, and clay, 
 Oaths embryonic and 
 
 A longing for Saturday, 
 Kneestraps and blood and flesh, 
 
 A chest exceedingly stout, 
 A soul ( which is a ques- 
 tion open to many a doubt), 
 And fashioned with pick and shovel, 
 
 And shapened in mire and mud, 
 With life of the road and hovel, 
 
 And death of the line or hod, 
 With fury and frenzy and fear 
 
 That his strength might endure for a span 
 From birth, through beer to bier, 
 
 The link 'twixt the ape and the man. 
 
 Cp. Swinburne. Atalanta in Calydon, Shepherd's Chorus.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 87 
 
 They gave him a will to strive 
 
 And earn the pittance which 
 Can barely keep him alive 
 
 To slave in the dirty ditch 
 Poorhouse and prison they wrought, 
 
 So he might enter therein 
 When idleness fell his lot 
 
 Or poverty led to sin. 
 They have given him transient joys, 
 
 They have given him space for delight, 
 The model, its riot and noise, 
 
 And night, and the fleas of the night, 
 The jeer of the better dressed neighbour, 
 
 And curses to every breath, 
 Labour, and dodging of labour, 
 
 Foreknowledge of sudden death 
 Foredoomed to go to the devil, 
 
 He carries a swearing gift. 1 
 His life is a path of evil 
 
 Between a shift and a shift. 
 
 1 Swearing is not a habit but a gift. From the Diary of 
 Moleskin Joe.
 
 88 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 TWENTY-ONE 
 
 We spend our years as a tale that is told badly. From 
 Moleskin Joe's Diary. 
 
 DOSSING it here in the model, dreary, bedraggled, 
 dry, 
 They 're cooking their grub on the hot-plate, and I 
 
 have got none to fry, 
 But still there 's a bed for twopence, so I '11 go to sleep 
 
 if I can, 
 Go a boy to my slumber and rise to-morrow a man. 
 
 Twenty and one to-morrow, twenty and one and not 
 A cent for the weary years that with shovel and bar 
 
 I 've wrought 
 Out on my own since childhood, down on my luck 
 
 since birth, 
 I who belong to the holiest civilized land on earth. 
 
 I 've done my graft on the dead line, where the man 
 
 with the muck-rake is, 
 Where the model smells I have dossed it in this woeful 
 
 world of His, 
 While others were spending their springtime learning 
 
 to please and pray, 
 I Ve fought for my right of living my own particular 
 
 way. 
 
 Oft I put cash to the bankers, banked it and lost till 
 
 broke, 
 Watching it tanner by tanner pass to the sharper's poke,
 
 Songs of the Dead End 89 
 
 And many a night in the hovel brag was the game we 
 
 played, 
 When I who was versed in the shovel fell to a heavy 
 
 spade. 
 
 Horses ran on the race course and won as a matter of 
 
 course 
 
 I Ve lost a tribe of money backing the other horse. 
 Beer, the hope of the dead-line! beer, the joy of the 
 
 soul! 
 Why would I pine and worry when beer can make me 
 
 whole ? x 
 
 And money is round to go round. Horses and wine, 
 
 and yes, 
 
 Women are fond of finery, women are fond of dress 
 Oh, pretty as girls are pretty, usual hair and eyes, 
 Golden and blue, etcetera, choke full of smiles and sighs. 
 
 Eyes of a luring siren, a hell of a blarneying tongue, 
 Old are the arts of women, and I was so very young, 
 Another came round to woo her, and sudden she took 
 
 to it, 
 I hugged a delusion in hairpins, got done like a frog 
 
 on the spit. 
 
 Seven years on the muck-pile God, but I 'm feeling 
 
 sick! 
 Sick of the slush and the shovel, sick of the hammer 
 
 and pick, 
 Labour endless and thankless, labour that 's never 
 
 done 
 Is it sinful to doubt of Heaven at penniless twenty-one? 
 
 1 Let him drink and forget his poverty. Prov. xixi., 7.
 
 go Songs of the Dead End 
 
 Not the price of a schooner, and, Lord, but I 'm feeling 
 
 dry; 
 They 're grubbing it up on the hot-plate, but I Ve got 
 
 nothing to fry 
 Still I can doss on twopence, and I '11 go to sleep if 
 
 I can 
 Go a boy to my slumber and rise to-morrow a man!
 
 Songs of the Dead End 91 
 
 THE WATERS 
 
 PLACID it lies as death and passionless as the grave, 
 With the pallid moonbeams flung like corpse-lights 
 o'er its wave, 
 
 Stuck in the hunch-backed hill, sluggish, silent, apart, 
 Brooding in durance vile, sad in its inmost heart, 
 Whimpering around the face, the sluice and the hard- 
 fast wall, 
 The great dam slumbers alone, sore of its endless 
 
 thrall 
 
 Down at the slimy base men toil in the dreary pit, 
 Under the shadow of night, cowering under it. 
 
 Freed from their prison walls, glad from the pent-up 
 
 place, 
 Down the trough of the hill streamlets on streamlets 
 
 race 
 
 Mad with the joy they feel, full of a wild desire, 
 Springing from ledge to ledge in molten silvery fire. 
 
 One by one they rise, the makeshift, rough-cast huts, 
 Where the knoll across the run of the little waters juts, 
 Here by the hot-plate's glow the shivering, shabby 
 
 tramp 
 Spells out the " Betting News " in the glare of the 
 
 naphtha lamp, 
 
 One man handles his gold, another writes to his love, 
 In the reeking gloomy hut in the shade of the dam 
 
 above,
 
 92 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 A dozen crowd to the school, watching the gamblers 
 play 
 
 A crash on the face of the hill, and the maddened dam 
 gives way! 
 
 A swirl, and the walls go down, the walls and the 
 
 watchers both, 
 A screech as the pirders jamb a prayer that is half 
 
 an oath; 
 
 The sluggish sand-hole spews, swallows and spews again, 
 The cesspool fills and chokes the throat of the sated 
 
 drain. 
 
 The flood breaks over the wall, foaming in ecstasy, 
 The black mud scurries before as it shivers the sluices 
 
 free, 
 
 The mountain shrubs uptorn, effortless share its path, 
 It madly whirls on the bend in all its riotous wrath. 
 
 "Winning! a running flush Christ! has the dam 
 
 gone loose I " 
 The tramp gets up with a curse, grasping his 
 
 "Betting News," 
 
 The gamblers gather their stakes, curious, undismayed, 
 The miser grabs at his wealth, the lover rises afraid, 
 The bulging wall breaks in, the roof falls through at 
 
 a blow, 
 A moment to think of a prayer, and breathe it before 
 
 they go 
 A moment, and then the flood reels through the broken 
 
 wall, 
 Caught like fleas in the fire, they splutter and choke 
 
 and fall
 
 Songs of the Dead End 93 
 
 Down the face of the hill, the waters roar as they 
 
 spread, 
 Bearing in braggart glee their freight of unshriven dead. 
 
 They builded a wall of stone with cunning, patience and 
 
 skill, 
 
 And the waters sulked behind brooding on every ill, 
 Till their pent-up rage broke forth on the men who 
 
 curbed their will.
 
 94 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 THE BALLAD OF THE LONG DAM 
 
 TWAS on the day the Dam gave way, I mind it 
 awfully well, 
 Moleskin Joe and Carroty Dan had a row about Riley's 
 
 gel 
 Good for a chew ! Well, seeing it 's you, I think I '11 
 
 yarn it out ; 
 
 Just turn your eye on that wall hard by, and see is the 
 boss about. 
 
 Wai, first let me tell how Riley's gel was pretty as 
 women go, 
 
 And whiles she went out with Carroty Dan, and whiles 
 she went out with Joe, 
 
 The way of a man with a maid, 't is said, is strange, 
 and it 's scripture true, 
 
 But stranger by far you '11 find they are, the wonder- 
 ful ways of two. 
 
 Day in and out it was fight about, night after night 
 the same, 
 
 And they batter it here, a trifle queer, as there ain't 
 no rules in the game, 
 
 A throw or a grip, a kick or a trip, no wool-padded, 
 kid-gloved play 
 
 You can go for your man in any style your own pe- 
 culiar way. 
 
 'T was on the day the Long Dam burst, Moleskin he 
 bummed his sub.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 95 
 
 And went and got boozed as he often did down at the 
 
 nearest pub, 
 Primed to the neck he weltered back, and sought out 
 
 Carroty D., 
 And the rest of us quickly formed a ring for the fight 
 
 that we knew would be. 
 
 'T was a fight and a half that blessed day, and as hard 
 
 as ever I saw, 
 Moleskin Joe had the track of a blow of a shoe on his 
 
 bearded jaw, 
 Carroty Dan had some teeth bunged out, and his eyes 
 
 bunged up as well, 
 When some one shouted, " The Long Dam 's burst, 
 
 slide like the very hell ! " 
 
 We heard the piles in the breastwork creek, break like 
 
 a twig and fall, 
 
 We saw the riotous water crash over the broken wall, 
 The roots and the furze and the rocks uphurled, go 
 
 like a wash of snow, 
 Then sudden I minded of Riley's gel alone in the hut 
 
 below 
 
 Alone in the path of the loosened flood. ... I ran 
 like the very wind, 
 
 With hurl and groan, by hollow and stone, I heard it 
 breaking behind, 
 
 I heard it urge its curling surge to the moan of the 
 failing stay, 
 
 And charge the banks in endless ranks forcing its head- 
 strong way. 
 
 And still the waters vomited forth, on cabin and copse 
 and bent,
 
 96 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 And still on my errand lightning-winged over the ridge 
 
 I went 
 How I got saved, and how we were saved, is more than 
 
 I 'm fit to tell, 
 But I mind of beating it by a neck along with old 
 
 Riley's gel. 
 
 That is the tale. 'T is a dirty job, and ours is a rotten 
 trade, 
 
 It takes a while to gather a pile with the help of a 
 shovel and spade 
 
 There 's Moleskin there a-shovelling dirt, and Car- 
 roty with a hod, 
 
 And Riley's daughter 's married to me honest, so help 
 me God.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 97 
 
 "HELL!" 
 
 (McSurly's Bar, 1911.) 
 
 COME gather, boys, together and we '11 gulp a cup 
 to cheer us, 
 
 Tho' the night is slinking past, let us be blythe, 
 We have done our graft and stuck it, boys, though 
 
 death was ever near us 
 All the way from Kinlochleven to Rosyth. 
 We have wrought in all the wide world's outside 
 
 reaches, 
 
 And you '11 never find us chickens at our work ; 
 We have clinched with toil and terror, and have mated 
 
 woe and error 
 'T was up to us, and, boys, we did n't shirk. 
 
 But 't was hell pure hell the while it lasted, 
 
 And cursed little wages for the pain, 
 But 't was up to us to do it, and by Gripes we managed 
 thro' it, 
 
 And to-morrow it will be the same again. 
 
 Do you mind the nights we laboured, boys, together, 
 
 Spread-eagled at our travail on the joists; 
 With the pulley wheels a-turning and the naphtha 
 lamps a-burning, 
 
 And the mortar crawling upward on the hoists, 
 While our hammers clanked like blazes on the facing 
 
 Where the trestles shook and staggered as we struck, 
 While the derricks on their pivots strained and broke 
 the crank-wheel rivets 
 
 As the shattered jib sank heavy in the muck.
 
 98 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 It was hell pure hell from start to finish, 
 And when it 's done, our labour will atone, 
 
 For all we did in strife and wrong the wild and erring 
 
 life along 
 Of us, who know the hell of it alone. 
 
 Do you mind the nights we fought, and drank and 
 
 lusted 
 When the wild red blood was up and sense was 
 
 gone, 
 There is much we can discuss about, and plenty too to 
 
 curse about, 
 
 The brutal lusts that led forever on. 
 How we wooed the bright-eyed women of the gutter, 
 How we squared our many quarrels with our fists, 
 When 't was " Rush the blessed shack again," and 
 
 " Strike the beggar back again," 
 And " If your man is clinching, break his wrists." 
 
 But 't was hell pure hell the way we did it. 
 
 It was " Up and burst your fellow if you can," 
 The maids we used to walk about, the things we used 
 to talk about, 
 
 Are those which make a devil of a man. 
 
 So drink to what we '11 do, and what we Ve finished, 
 
 We '11 spend the money wildly as we wrought ; 
 Let pious people chatter, why to them it does n't matter 
 
 If we drop below the quarry face or not. 
 But they talk a little rot about our morals, 
 
 And rave a little cant about our shame, 
 But, boys, they do not know of it, the trebly cursed 
 woe of it, 
 
 'T is we who know, the players in the game.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 99 
 
 And 't is hell pure hell and we have seen it, 
 Our comrades dropping wildly off the slips, 
 
 When outworks broke to fall apart, when landslides 
 
 shoved the wall apart, 
 They died like men, with curses on their lips. 
 
 The lives that snapped in death, sure they '11 remind us 
 
 Of the sorrow striking fiercely to the core, 
 The endless toil before us, the nameless graves behind 
 us, 
 
 Where our stricken comrades perished by the score. 
 These are the little facts that make us brutal, 
 
 The things that make us curse above our breath, 
 The furious fight infernal, that is ours to wage 
 eternal 
 
 The tragedy more horrible than death. 
 
 But it is n't in our power, my boys, to mend it, 
 So we '11 face it to the final with a curse ; 
 
 But it 's hell pure hell until it 's ended. 
 
 And ended well it can be nothing 
 worse.
 
 IOO 
 
 THE CONGER EEL 
 
 THE waters dance on the ocean crest, or swirl in 
 the cyclone's breath, 
 But down below where the divers go, they sullenly 
 
 sleep in death, 
 Where the slime is holding the cutter's stays, where 
 
 the sailors' bones, are white, 
 Where the phantoms sweep through the eerie deep in 
 
 realms of endless night, 
 'T is there it holds its sway supine, and plaits its every 
 
 reel, 
 The silent, sibilant, sombre, sinuous, stealthy Conger 
 
 eel, 
 
 The silky Conger eel, the solemn-eyed Conger eel 
 It circles by where the dead men lie, the spectral 
 
 Conger eel. 
 
 The devil fish, grim in its cavern dim, a sinister siren 
 lies, 
 
 And the shark will seize on its frightened prey where 
 the spumous surges rise, 
 
 The dolphin may play in its riotous way where the 
 waters are calm and slow, 
 
 The whale may spout like a geyser out by the ice of an 
 Arctic floe, 
 
 But down a hundred fathoms or more below the lance- 
 edged keel, 
 
 It slily slides, 'neath the shifty tides, the sensuous Con- 
 ger eel,
 
 Songs of the Dead End 101 
 
 The lily-soft Conger eel, the green-eyed Conger eel, 
 It grovels in grime and the stagnant slime, the hideous 
 Conger eel. 
 
 And there in its sluggish realms of woe it has reigned 
 
 for unnumbered years. 
 It feasted of old on the vikings bold, and the Spanish 
 
 buccaneers, 
 And kings and the sons of kings have gone to lie on its 
 
 banquet board, 
 And many a lady young and fair from the arms of her 
 
 drowning lord 
 But down below no blush of shame comes to the lips 
 
 that steal 
 The kisses soft from the lady fair; the passionless 
 
 Conger eel 
 
 The cynical Conger eel, carnivorous Conger eel, 
 May lie on the breast of the maiden chaste and never 
 
 a tremor feel 
 That vampire Conger eel.
 
 IO2 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 BACK FROM KINLOCHLEVEN 
 
 And the place that knew him, knows him no more. 
 
 THE waterworks are finished and the boys have 
 jacked the shovel, 
 See, the concrete board deserted, for the barrow squad 
 
 is gone, 
 The gambling school is bursted, there is silence in the 
 
 hovel, 
 For the lads are sliding townwards and are padding 
 
 it since dawn. 
 Pinched and pallid are their faces from their graft in 
 
 God-shunned places, 
 
 Tortured, twisted up their frames are, slow and lum- 
 bering their gait, 
 But unto their hopeful dreaming comes the town with 
 
 lights a-gleaming, 
 
 Where the bar-men add more water, and the shame- 
 less women wait. 
 
 Eighteen months of day shift, night shift, easy, slavish, 
 
 long or light shift, 
 Anchorites on musty bacon, crusty bread, and evil 
 
 tea, 
 Sweated through the Summer till grim Winter came a 
 
 hoary pilgrim, 
 
 Chasing from the meagre blanket the familiar, 
 flighty flea. 1 
 
 1 The wicked flea, that all men pursueth. MOLES KIN JOE.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 103 
 
 Then the days when through the cutting came the 
 
 death-white snowflakes drifting, 
 When the bar was chilled and frosted, and the 
 
 jumper seared like hell, 
 When the hammer shook uncertain in the grimy hands 
 
 uplifting, 
 
 And the chisel bounced uncanny 'neath the listless 
 strokes that fell. 
 
 But to Him give thanks 't is over and the city fills the 
 
 distance, 
 On the line of least resistance they are coming sure 
 
 but slow, 
 
 How they wait the trull and harlot, jail-bird, vaga- 
 bond and varlet, 
 For there 's many a bob to squander and the city 
 
 ravens know! 
 Parasites from pub and alley welcome in the grimed 
 
 and greasy, 
 Gather round with wail and plaudit, eager for their 
 
 dough and gin, 
 They are coming from the muck-pile and they mean to 
 
 take it easy, 
 
 They have pals to share their joy and incidentally 
 their tin. 
 
 They are tabid and outworn, unpresentable, unshorn, 
 
 Occupants of many a model, wooers of the harridan, 
 
 Workers of the wildernesses, dressing as the savage 
 
 dresses, 
 Crawling in the rear of progress, following the 
 
 march of man. 
 
 Where grim nature reigneth lonely over gelid places, 
 only
 
 IO4 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 Known to death and desolation, they have roughed 
 
 it long and hard, 
 Where the chronic river wallows in the refuse of the 
 
 hollows, 
 And the thunderbolt is resting on the mountain tops 
 
 it scarred. 
 
 But 't is over for the moment, and the heel-end of 
 
 creation 
 Vomits back the men who roughed it to the town 
 
 that sent them forth, 
 They who face the death it threatened with a grim 
 
 determination, 
 They who wrestled with the slayer incarnated in 
 
 the North 
 Go and see them primed with lager, drain them of 
 
 the coppers sought for 
 In the depths of desolation, in the byways of the 
 
 beast, 
 Go and bum them of the ha'pence that like maniacs 
 
 they wrought for, 
 
 For they bear the famine bravely, but can never 
 stand the feast. 
 
 They are coming to the city, soon you '11 see their 
 
 rants and quarrels, 
 See them marching off to prison, see them drinking 
 
 day by day, 
 In the dead end of their labours they forgot your code 
 
 of morals, 
 
 They are ne'er intoxicated in the super-saintly way. 
 You will know them by their reeking shag, you '11 
 know their way of speaking,
 
 Songs of the Dead End 105 
 
 You can spot them by their moleskins and their 
 
 bluchers battered down, 
 
 They are wild, uncultivated, maybe rather under- 
 rated 
 
 But at any rate you '11 know them by their curses 
 when in town.
 
 io6 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 THE DEATH OF MOLESKIN 
 
 Here lies the remains of John Todd, 
 Not dead, but drunk, by God! 
 
 MOLESKIN. 
 
 JOE is dead? Of course he is, 
 Dead as any nail can be, 
 Look upon that face of his 
 
 See, if you are sober, see 
 The unutterable peace 
 
 Stamped upon his countenance 
 See, and let your prattle cease, 
 Give the dead man half a chance. 
 
 Joe is dead ? Of course he 's dead ; 
 
 Hair dishevelled on his brow, 
 Lay him on the model bed, 
 
 Nought avails to wake him now. 
 See, the jar is almost full 
 
 Look, I Ve piles and piles of dough 
 Moleskin, have another pull. 
 
 Not an answer. Poor old Joe. 
 
 Give the fallen man his due, 
 
 He was one that always could 
 Take a modest pint or two, 
 
 Just as any navvy should, 
 Do a week or two in jile, 
 
 Strike a bargain with a fence, 
 Fight his man in perfect style, 
 
 Play the game, and stump the pence.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 107 
 
 Poor old Joe is lying dead 
 
 Drunk as e'er a man can be, 
 Lay some lager near his head 
 
 So when waking he may see 
 Softly let us go to sleep, 
 
 Be your voices hushed and low. 
 Hark his snoring loud and deep 
 
 Peace be with your slumber, Joe.
 
 io8 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 CHOSES DU SOIR 
 
 (From the French of Hugo.) 
 
 HILLY the eve, and the silent mist 
 Veils the moon in a mystic haze, 
 The cattle go down by the waterways, 
 And the skyline glimmers like amethyst. 
 
 A silhouette on the lonely dune 
 
 The traveller shows twixt earth and sky, 
 And fretfully cawing the rooks go by, 
 
 Shrinking in fright from the leprous moon. 
 
 The witch sits down, a ghoul at her throat, 
 And over the tarn the goblins call, 
 The spider has spun its web on the wall, 
 
 And waits for its prey and wearies not. 
 
 This of old was thy song, I von 
 The song is living, the singer gone. 
 
 Apart the storm-chased luggers fly, 
 
 The straining mainmast is stripped and bare, 
 And the billows sing to the whirling air 
 
 A dirge for a failing dynasty. 
 
 The coach goes rumbling along the road, 
 
 The road that leads to the wide world's end, 
 Carrying, mother or wife or friend 
 
 Pity the ones who to-night are abroad.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 109 
 
 On the hillside lone the graveyard is, 
 A cross, a flower, a written stone, 
 The worm that crawls on the skeleton, 
 
 And the mouldering lips that we loved to kiss. 
 
 The fire is bright on the cottage hearth, 
 
 The kettle sings in an undertone 
 
 A song of joy that is all its own, 
 And children are full of idle mirth. 
 
 of old was thy song, Ivon 
 Where is the wayward singer gone?
 
 no Songs of the Dead End 
 
 THE SONG OF WERNER 
 
 (From the German of Scheffel.) 
 
 O ROMAN maid! why do you try 
 To win a heart you cannot hold 
 With honeyed word and witching eye? 
 For ah! the ancient fire is cold. 
 
 Beyond the virgin Alpine snow, 
 
 My lady sleeps beside the Rhine 
 
 Upon her grave three roses blow, 
 
 Her grave who was the love of mine. 
 
 O, maid of Rome ! you cannot move 
 
 The heart that sorrow steeped in gloom; 
 
 For me alone but one to love, 
 My lady sleeping in the tomb.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 1 1 1 
 
 THE SLAVE 
 
 What mean ye that ye beat my people into pieces, and grind 
 the faces of the poor? Isai. iii., 15. 
 
 THE olden chronicles tell us Akbar the slave was 
 strong, 
 On the woes of his brothers in bondage he brooded and 
 
 sorrowed long, 
 
 Akbar, the slave of Reienos, scarred with the iron and 
 thong. 
 
 He toiled in the field and forest and furrow early and 
 
 late, 
 Dragging through ruts and ridges, with slouching and 
 
 servile gait ; 
 But Akbar the slave was human, and Akbar the slave 
 
 could hate. 
 
 Under the goad of the master, sweating as horses 
 
 sweat, 
 
 Scorned by the page and lady appareled in satinet, 
 The sinewy slave could suffer, suffer and not forget. 
 
 When the heat of the day was over and the tremulous 
 
 stars looked wan, 
 When night hung low on the turret, drawbridge and 
 
 barbican, 
 Into the darkling forest stealthily stole a man.
 
 H2 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 Silent as steals a panther, quick as a wolf on prowl, 
 A shadow among the shadows, almost unseen by the 
 
 owl, 
 As the watch dog saw the figure in awe it filled the 
 
 night with its howl. 
 
 In a hut in the depth of the thicket, rugged, misshapen, 
 
 rude, 
 
 Akbar the slave of Reienos in the spiritless solitude, 
 With the cleverness hate had given, fashioned a slab 
 
 of wood. 
 
 The prong of a graip for a gimlet, a sharpened spade 
 
 for a plane, 
 He shapened it level and specular, smooth as the shield 
 
 of a thane, 
 Toiling alone in the darkness, filled with a passion 
 
 insane. 
 
 With withes of the seasoned willows he tied it as firm 
 
 as steel 
 Down to the bench in the dwelling, filled with a giant's 
 
 zeal, 
 Then made he with maniac labour a grim and horrible 
 
 wheel. 
 
 With the rim of flexible pinewood, the lissome fir for 
 the spoke, 
 
 A groove and a rope around it, a turning handle of 
 oak, 
 
 Thus Akbar spoke in the darkness, timing his ham- 
 mer's stroke
 
 Songs of the Dead End 113 
 
 " The brutes of the byres are tended, there is food for 
 
 the hunting pack, 
 He has trampled the crumbs from his table, the crumbs 
 
 that my brothers lack, 
 Reienos has tortured and lashed us now I will pay 
 
 him back. 
 
 " Lord, I have waited to see Thee strike him down in 
 
 his crime, 
 I who am nearly outworn, whipped like a cur in my 
 
 prime, 
 Vengeance is Thine it is spoken, but I cannot abide 
 
 Thy time." 
 
 The arrogant Lord Reienos strode through the woods 
 
 alone, 
 Far through the gloomy forest thinking of things 
 
 unknown, 
 Reienos the strong and fearless, hard of heart as a 
 
 stone. 
 
 As a panther hangs on its quarry, as a vulture circles 
 
 afar, 
 
 A sinister figure followed, silent as moves a star, 
 Akbar, the grim avenger, marked with the sear and 
 
 the scar. 
 
 The rubescent sun sank westward, tingeing with ver- 
 meil dyes, 
 
 The shimmering leaves of the forest, the gentian dome 
 of the skies, 
 
 And showing the tigerish hate in the villein's passion- 
 ate eyes.
 
 114 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 A crash in the brake behind him, like when a boar 
 
 breaks through 
 
 Reienos turned in anger, turned, and saw, and knew 
 And the slayer laughed in the silence for the deed he 
 
 lusted to do. 
 
 Laughed and laid hold of his master, gripped him 
 
 fiercely and strong 
 Seized like a leaf in the cyclone, borne as a straw is 
 
 along, 
 Reienos thought on his Maker, Akbar remembered the 
 
 thong. 
 
 In the zest of the whirlwind foray Reienos had led 
 
 the way, 
 When the noise of the shields and spears rang to the 
 
 vault of day, 
 But death at the hands of a villein Reienos began 
 
 to pray. 
 
 Into the gloomy cabin drear as the pit of dread, 
 Down on the slab he placed him, his hands above his 
 
 head, 
 Tied to the wheel, his body fastened with withe and 
 
 thread. 
 
 " Pray to heaven for mercy as your hours are almost 
 done, 
 
 The lowly slave at your castle may look on the mor- 
 row's sun, 
 
 But two will pass ere it rises, and thou, Reienos, art 
 one
 
 Songs of the Dead End 115 
 
 " One, and I am the other strung from your castle 
 
 wall 
 Pray I have prayed for years outside your lordly 
 
 hall, 
 But God in Heaven was busy watching the sparrows 
 
 fall." 
 
 Flaxen pale the moonshine glimmered on dune and 
 
 tree, 
 
 A groan came borne on the breezes, lone and piteously, 
 A wheel is turned in the cabin, a maniac laughs in glee, 
 
 A meteor streaks the impearled dome with its fiery 
 
 light, 
 Cluster on cluster they sparkle stars that are diamond 
 
 bright, 
 Another turn in the torture, another moan in the 
 
 night. 
 
 Falling as falls the spice flower adown the mane of the 
 
 breeze, 
 
 Slowly the molten moonfire fell on the bearded trees, 
 Where the eerie midnight vampires bowed at their 
 
 fetishes. 
 
 Borne in dismal cadence, the groans of the sufferer 
 Sank away in the silence, died on the midnight air, 
 And only the grim avenger watched by the body 
 there. 
 
 They found the slave in the dawning, beside the lord 
 of the hall,
 
 n6 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 They hung him in scorn and fury, high from the castle 
 
 wall, 
 The man who wept for his people, the man who tired 
 
 of his thrall. 
 
 Only an ancient story, fraught with its weight of woe, 
 Of the love of a slave for freedom, and the hate that 
 
 crushed him low 
 Only an outworn story, now as in long ago.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 117 
 
 A GEOLOGICAL NIGHTMARE 
 
 THE lurid volcanoes were guarding the pole, 
 The sinister flames reached the Northern star 
 I wandered through ages untold with my soul 
 
 And the grim fellowship of the plesiosaur, 
 In the regions of felspar and red syenite, 
 
 Where the mammoth was romping in furious glee, 
 Where the ichthyosaur chased the slim belemnite, 
 Through the lava-tinged waves of a Triassic sea. 
 
 On the clubmoss I saw the wild dinosaur feed, 
 
 From the primeval tree swung the anthropoid ape, 
 Through the network of fern and cyad and reed 
 
 Crashed the long brontosaur of the cumbersome 
 
 shape ; 
 The grim armadillo that wallowed in slime, 
 
 The lizard and serpent that flew in the air, 
 Looked weird in that eerie pre-adamite time 
 
 'Neath the luminous sun or the stellary bear. 
 
 But where are they gone to, the mammoth and auk? 
 
 The dodo and dragon say, where are they gone? 
 In the Triassic beds and the Eocene chalk 
 
 They have fallen asleep and are slumbering on. 
 The knight of the sickle has numbered their days, 
 
 And Nature embalmed them in shells and in stones, 
 And we their descendants in boundless amaze, 
 
 Discuss them, or pore on their fossilized bones.
 
 n8 
 
 Thus we even pass from the gentian dome, 
 
 And follow the trail of the monsters that saw 
 The heaven of stars that ne'er glimmered on Rome, 
 
 Adown to the vale of ineffable awe 
 We go with the pallor of fear on our face, 
 
 They went from the fight with the bloodstain and 
 
 scar, 
 And the man and the maiden must rest in the place 
 
 Where they wait them the dragon and ichthyosauri
 
 Songs of the Dead End 119 
 
 THE PIONEER 
 
 HE was a servant boy, and he 
 Married a maid of his own degree, 
 Rented a plot of the mountain lands, 
 And faced the wild with willing hands, 
 Where the whortleberry and monkshood grew, 
 And the night-shade steeped in the poison dew. 
 The juniper covered the rocky ledge, 
 The bramble grew to the torrent's edge; 
 The meadow land was rough and damp, 
 With here a rock and there a swamp ; 
 The pines came flocking around his door; 
 The cold spring oozed through the cabin floor, 
 But, save for his wife, companionless, 
 He raised his hands to the wilderness. 
 
 The pine went down before his axe, 
 The scanty corn grew up in his tracks, 
 With shovel and spade the mead was drained, 
 With weary labour the brook was chained, 
 With his simple faith, and two men's power, 
 A giant he wrought through sun and shower, 
 And of every yard he dared dispute 
 With the wild, it drove him back a foot, 
 For its ways are many, its strength is great, 
 And man is conquered soon or late. 
 
 The woman died in a twelvemonth's space, 
 
 And left him alone in the gloomy place ; 
 
 But sorrowful, silent, yet unsubdued, 
 
 He delved and drilled and hammered and hewed,
 
 I2O Songs of the Dead End 
 
 Clearing the brambles, breaking the stones, 
 Till the fever set in his aching bones, 
 And the jeering wraith of the wild in wrath 
 Flung him in scorn from out its path. 
 
 Then the corn rotted, the drain fell low, 
 Again the bramble began to grow, 
 The sapling grew by the fallen log, 
 And he died in his hut as dies a dog, 
 Shivering, thirsty, afraid, alone, 
 Unhappy, uncared for, and unknown. * * * 
 This is the story fraught with fear, 
 The tale of the rustic pioneer. 
 
 After him came the mine and mill, 
 
 A city was built upon the hill ; 
 
 There bearded fools in the council sat, 
 
 And jabbered their views upon this and that, 
 
 But no one knew or cared to hear, 
 
 The tale of the early pioneer.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 121 
 
 THE HOUSE OF REST 
 
 UNTO a land unknown to me I came on some 
 strange mission sent, 
 A lonely pilgrim from the night I wandered on a 
 
 wonder way, 
 And said, " I '11 seek athrough the world for rest and 
 
 unalloyed content," 
 
 And sought beneath the frigid stars, and sought be- 
 neath the fretful day. 
 
 I saw the House of Toil, and there the people died for 
 
 lack of bread, 
 There gnawing hunger kept her rule relentless o'er 
 
 the battered roof, 
 And in the House of Love they wept for spoken words 
 
 and words unsaid 
 
 I gripped my staff in mute despair and firmly kept 
 myself aloof. 
 
 The House of Wealth was fair to see, all damascened 
 
 and diapered, 
 But inside riot reigned supreme, and sated men had 
 
 blighted health, 
 While outside gaunt-eyed forms went by, and starving 
 
 children's cries were heard, 
 
 And godless ones with sinful souls crept in and ran- 
 sacked it by stealth.
 
 122 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 The House of God was passing grand, with moulded 
 
 arch and sculptured door, 
 With picture, psalter, pulpit, pew, with printed 
 
 prayer and priceless pyx, 
 But from within an endless wail was wafted upwards 
 
 evermore, 
 
 And hair was rent and sackcloth worn beneath the 
 silent crucifix. 
 
 The House of Azreel stands alone, and greater than 
 
 abyssmal night 
 The gloom of it, and depth of it, unruffled by the 
 
 softest breath 
 The door is ope, I enter there, and dressed in robes of 
 
 pallid white, 
 
 I greet the worm, and rest me in the House of 
 Azreel and of Death. 
 
 And here where never mellow morn may send a ray 
 
 of light or bliss, 
 Where never lingering winds are borne, where never 
 
 maiden's voice is heard, 
 Afar from holiness and hate, from kindness and the 
 
 soulless kiss, 
 
 I sleep content for endless years and never wish to 
 speak a word.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 123 
 
 THE OLD MEN 
 
 THERE 'S a handful of meal in the barrel, and a 
 little oil in the cruse, 
 We wear out our thin-soled sandals, they tan for the 
 
 next year's shoes, 
 And whet their axe at the grindstone, while ours hangs 
 
 blunt on the wall, 
 And willingly shapen the rooftree, though ours is ready 
 
 to fall. 
 The old fleece rots on the wether, the new fleece whirls 
 
 in the loom, 
 They weave the cloth for the bridal, we fashion the 
 
 shroud for the tomb, 
 Who followed the path as we found it from dawn to 
 
 decline of day, 
 Till the great world lies behind us, before us the 
 
 lonely way. 
 
 Our sons go into the forest, our sons go out to the 
 
 mead, 
 And labour with saw or with sickle, everyone unto his 
 
 need, 
 Our daughters will meet them at even, with smile and 
 
 with simper and sigh, 
 And the love that their mothers bore us, in days that 
 
 have drifted by; 
 On their lips the red blood crimsons, and their golden 
 
 tresses glow, 
 But we Ve seen the red lips whiten and the tresses turn 
 
 to snow.
 
 124 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 What makes us envy the moments they snatch from the 
 
 swift-winged fate, 
 And the fury that follows after, catching them soon or 
 
 late? 
 Some fierce inherent hatred the brute of the wilderness 
 
 bore 
 As he lost command of the wolfpack when young and 
 
 swift no more, 
 
 Some olden envious instinct the hoary chieftain had 
 When the reins of his despot power passed to a beard- 
 less lad; 
 
 Ours is the useless prattle, the solace of Solomon, 
 When he loathed the maids of his harem, and the days 
 
 of his lusts were gone, 
 With the scorn of the young to goad us, and the doom 
 
 that dogs our feet, 
 We are the olden cynics, wise in our own conceit. 
 
 There 's a handful of meal in the barrel, and a little 
 
 oil in the cruse, 
 Which our toothless loves will bake us we who are 
 
 little use 
 Let our sons go out to the hunting, let our daughters 
 
 simper and smile; 
 We wait for the welcome summons only a little 
 
 while, 
 For we are the useless old men, wrinkled and bent and 
 
 grey, 
 With the things we have done behind us, before us 
 
 the lampless way; 
 We are the useless old men with faltering, failing 
 
 breath, 
 With a stake in the great Hereafter, sealed by the 
 
 hand of Death.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 125 
 
 THE END 
 
 GAUNT clouds are piled athwart the sky, 
 The cold wind soughs along the earth, 
 In hapless towns the people die, 
 
 The fires are cold on every hearth, 
 The spectral moon has lost its light, 
 
 The shrunken sun is pale and wan, 
 And time is one unholy night 
 A night that never knows a dawn. 
 
 Forsaken homes where mortals dwelt 
 
 Are drear as death and still as Styx, 
 The cloisters where the godly knelt 
 
 Are fallen on the crucifix ; 
 No watcher ponders on the stars, 
 
 Of life and death no sages tell, 
 No soldier hastens to the wars, 
 
 No preacher speaks of heaven or hell. 
 
 The fiery meteors cross the skies, 
 
 And far apart the Twins have gone, 
 A planet to the sacrifice! 
 
 And Paris sleeps with Babylon. 
 A mighty race has passed away, 
 
 A fretful planet whirled in space 
 A pawn in time's unending play, 
 
 Is mourning for the mighty race.
 
 126 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 "NO MORE" 
 
 (Written on the evictions in Gweedore on the northern coast of 
 Ireland.) 
 
 ^ I^HE sun moves on its path of light 
 
 A Across the heaven's floor, 
 The welkin beams above the night 
 But they return no more. 
 
 The mountains sentinel the glen 
 
 And all its emerald store, 
 The meadow, copse wood, and the fen 
 
 But they return no more. 
 
 The honeysuckle in the vale 
 
 Was ne'er so fair before, 
 The roses scent the evening gale 
 
 But they return no more. 
 
 The watchdog, waiting hollow-eyed 
 
 Before the cabin door, 
 No more will be the peasant's pride, 
 
 For they return no more. 
 
 For ever stilled the evening latch, 
 
 The peat fire's glow is o'er, 
 The ivy fattens on the thatch, 
 
 For they return no more.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 127 
 
 The ocean twines its throbbing arms 
 
 Around the silent shore, 
 Or raises loud its wild alarums 
 
 But they return no more. 
 
 Upon the beach the lugger lies 
 
 Beside the useless oar, 
 No more 'twill bear the fisher's prize, 
 
 Now they return no more. 
 
 Where once the weaver plied his trade 
 
 The shuttle's flight is o'er, 
 The ditch now holds the rotted spade, 
 
 And they return no more. 
 
 Not now is heard the evening chime, 
 
 The reapers' song is o'er, 
 They wander weary in a clime 
 
 From which they come no more. 
 
 Sad, sad, thy tale, land of my birth, 
 
 Bear witness wild Gweedore, 
 Thy children banished o'er the earth, 
 
 And they return no more.
 
 128 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 SALVE, REX DEI GRACIA! 
 
 This may have happened in new-world times, 
 
 Or yet in the ages of long ago, 
 I am a writer writing my rhymes, 
 
 And how on earth should a rhymer know! 
 
 THERE lived a man who was wise and old, 
 And the old are wise, we must all agree, 
 And the things he had learned were manifold, 
 For he ate the fruit of the knowledge tree. 
 But lo, and behold you! there came to him, 
 As he walked abroad in the city square, 
 Scholar and merchant and soldier grim, 
 Who making obeisance spoke him fair : 
 
 " We come, from the people of many a land, 
 Unworthy to press your garment hem 
 To crown thee here, as is their command, 
 For the sake of the good you have done for them. 
 We come from the peoples of town on town, 
 The people, who know your power and worth, 
 And they bade us bring you a golden crown 
 And crown you the greatest man on earth." 
 
 " We slept, and you toiled thro' the lee-long night, 
 You saw us unmeet, and made us fit." 
 But the brow of the seer grew black as night ; 
 And he questioned "What merit has come of it? 
 I have planned the ships that ye sail afar, 
 And taught you to sharpen the arrow-head; 
 But your ships are battered in shiftless war, 
 And your brothers' blood on the arrow is red.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 129 
 
 " I have taught you to build your houses fine ; 
 But the beggars grovel before the door, 
 And you house your servants amongst the swine, 
 And boast your pride to the starving poor. 
 Now do you come with cant and crown 
 To crown me greatest of all mankind! 
 But, follow me far from the crowded town, 
 I '11 shew you the man you come to find ! " 
 
 They followed him, far from the city square, 
 
 Soldier and scholar in cloak and hood. 
 
 They came to a village, the pump and there 
 
 Gaping the village idiot stood. 
 
 Untutored, unmeet to labour or plan, 
 
 A brainless, brutish and simple thing 
 
 But the seer outspoke " Behold the man 
 
 You claim as Monarch ! Go, crown him King ! " 
 
 " King! " said the scholar, and laughed his mirth. 
 
 " King! " said the soldier, and loudly swore. 
 
 " Though long we have bowed to your power and 
 
 worth, 
 
 Henceforth we scoff at your simple lore. 
 The good he has done, we would wish to hear 
 In town or in country, in forge or farm." 
 " Oh, little, perchance," replied the seer, 
 " But he never has done a mortal harm." 
 
 So the village idiot was crowned as King. 
 'T is strange, and in sooth it may be so. 
 I am a singer trying to sing, 
 And how on earth should a singer know ?
 
 130 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 DOWN ON THE DEAD END 
 
 (On tramp, 1909.) 
 
 I'VE toiled at the end of creation, stripped to the 
 trousers and shirt, 
 I Ve hashed like the very damnation and squandered 
 
 my money like dirt, 
 And jobs that are nameless I Ve wrought in, and deeds 
 
 that are shameless I Ve done, 
 
 And fights without number I Ve fought in, and paid 
 like the deuce for my fun. 
 
 I Ve piled up the slush in the bucket, down to my 
 
 knees in the drift, 
 Wet till I felt I. must chuck it, or drop like a mule at 
 
 my shift, 
 In dreary and desolate places, with the boss standing 
 
 glowering by 
 At his men and their fungous-white faces, I Ve felt as 
 
 if ready to die. 
 
 Drink, and I Ve tried to keep from it, women and 
 
 cards 't was the same, 
 The dog will return to his vomit, the devil is boss of 
 
 the game, 
 The red of the wine cup has hidden the adders with 
 
 poisonous teeth, 
 The sunlight is bright on the midden, with the rot of 
 
 the wide world beneath.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 131 
 
 Disheartened, discarded, disgusted, I 'm down on the 
 dead-line once more, 
 
 Beggared, benighted and bursted, the jail or the work- 
 house before 
 
 Well, life had its trouble and worry, the Fates have 
 been devilish hard, 
 
 My chances went by in a hurry, I plunged on the rot- 
 tenest card. 
 
 I have n't a pipe-full of Carroll's to cheer me while 
 
 tramping it out, 
 And getting because of my morals a hell of a knocking 
 
 about, 
 Well! life was a foolhardy gamble and down in its 
 
 by-ways I strove, 
 And perhaps in the ultimate scramble I '11 corner a 
 
 shakedown above.
 
 132 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 RUN DOWN 
 
 IN the grim dead end he lies, with passionless filmy 
 eyes, 
 
 English Ned, with a hole in his head, 
 Staring up at the skies. 
 
 The engine driver swore as often he swore before 
 
 " I whistled him back from the flamin' track, 
 An' I could n't do no more." 
 
 The gaffer spoke through the 'phone " Platelayer 
 
 Seventy-one 
 
 Got killed to-day on the six-foot way, 
 By a goods on the city run. 
 
 " English Ned was his name, 
 No one knows whence he came, 
 He did n't take mind- of the road behind 
 And none of us is to blame." 
 
 They turned the slag in the bed 
 To cover the clotted red, 
 Washed the joints and the crimsoned points, 
 And buried poor English Ned. 
 
 In the drear dead end he. lies, 
 With the earth, across his eyes, 
 
 And a stone to say, 
 
 How he passed away 
 To a shift beyond the skies.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 133 
 
 WITH THE BREAKDOWN SQUAD 
 
 " Wreck of the city express, sir" 
 The newspaper sellers yell, 
 
 The people are buying, buying, 
 My! don't the papers sell, 
 
 And the publishers say in their usual way 
 "Business is doing well" 
 
 A TANNER down on a three spot, 
 Losing again, he Mowed ! " 
 " Give me a fill of tobacco." 
 
 " Here, a one that I owed." 
 
 " Losing again with Heavens! 
 
 A passenger off the road ! " 
 
 Seventy-nine was the engine, 
 
 Speediest on the line 
 We rushed to the van like demons 
 
 And waited the signal sign, 
 Then flashing afar like a scymitar 
 
 Went the flame of seventy-nine. 
 
 Out in the night as phantoms, 
 Out to the wreck we steal, 
 
 Horror urging our heart-beats, 
 Feeling as sinners feel 
 
 The rails like souls in torment 
 Whimpered beneath the wheel.
 
 134 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 Above us the moon went sailing 
 
 White as the face of death, 
 Watching the engine gliding 
 
 Over the world beneath, 
 While we pulled at our pipes in silence, 
 
 And heard our every breath. 
 
 The engine fire is cleaving 
 
 A path to the stars on high 
 The cirrus clouds in the heaven 
 
 Like burial shrouds go by, 
 Sent from the dim hereafter 
 
 For men and women who die. 
 
 In the gaunt and gelid cutting 
 
 Ghouls of the darkness brood, 
 A lone, belated raven 
 
 Cries through the solitude, 
 And the signals rise to danger 
 
 Redder than human blood. 
 
 A crash of brakes in the darkness 
 
 A rush and a crash again : 
 Men are wailing in anguish, 
 
 Women laugh in their pain 
 As a prayer that 's prayed by a grave new made 
 
 Is the groan of the coupling chain. 
 
 The rails are splashed with crimson, 
 There 's blood on the catcher bar, 
 
 The writhing engine hisses 
 
 Through the sky-roofed abattoir 
 
 As the flame in a midnight churchyard 
 Is the light of each chilly star.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 135 
 
 " Out with the lint and bandage 
 
 See are the stretchers spread 
 Out with a man to the signal 
 
 And guard the line ahead. 
 Haste, and look to the living 
 
 Before you bother the dead. 
 
 There 's sorrow deeper than tears 
 That words in vain may speak 
 
 The tearless mother watches 
 The red on her baby's cheek, 
 
 And downcast unwet lashes 
 Tell of the hearts that break. 
 
 Out in the night and the horror 
 
 We labour and curse or pray, 
 " Give me a drink of water " 
 
 " I '11 meet her some other day " 
 We place the maimed on the stretchers, 
 
 The dead in the six-foot way. 
 
 " Two inches wide in the gauging, 
 
 Out with the ramps and yes, 
 The facing points must have done it 
 
 Lord, what an awful mess! 
 But hurry and have it ready 
 
 For passing the night express." 
 
 " Awful railway disaster" 
 
 The newspapers chronicle 
 The men in the streets are buying 
 
 Gracious! the papers sell, 
 And the publishers say in their usual way 
 
 " Business is doing well."
 
 136 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 ON THE LATE SHIFT 
 
 Mayhap there 's a hitch in the signal wire, 
 Or the other points are drawn, 
 
 But some go out on the night-shift lone 
 That never come in with the dawn, 
 
 And a crimson splash on the engine wheel 
 Just tells of the shunter gone. 
 
 SEVEN waggons to siding four, one to the buffer 
 end 
 Damn you, watch ! or they '11 run you down. God, 
 
 it 's a hellish night ! 
 Jimmy Collins is getting a wife time he was making 
 
 a bend 
 
 There he 's there at the dead-end points, signalling 
 with the light. 
 
 " A good man out on the night-shift, Jim, willing 
 
 and ain't it queer, 
 There he 's singing, the first time I 've heard him 
 
 in my life 
 Yes, willing and straight is Jimmy, I 've mated him 
 
 seven year 
 
 Damn it, it 's blowing somewhat and now he 
 looks for a wife. 
 
 " See and look to your carcass, and watch ! On a night 
 
 like this 
 
 You never can tell the minute where has that 
 Collins gone ?
 
 Songs of the Dead End 137 
 
 An engine punches your ticket God, if your feet 
 
 should miss 
 
 Damn me ! I think I 'm nervous signal the en- 
 gine on. 
 
 " Two o'clock ! I was certain 't was almost break of 
 
 day 
 Where is Collins? Oh, yonder. I 'm wet to the 
 
 very spine 
 A train for the cross-road siding pull it the other 
 
 way 
 
 Collins, you fool! what ails you? Jump to the 
 other line! 
 
 "Collins, you idiot, jump it! ... Christ, he's down 
 
 like a sack! . . . 
 Surely he must have heard me. . . . Speak to me, 
 
 Jimmy, do. 
 . . . Tell me you are n't hurted ah ! the blood on 
 
 track 
 
 ... I shifted the engine, Jimmy, but heavens! I 
 thought you knew." 
 
 " Break it to her in the morning I was thinking 
 
 about her, then 
 The wind was blowing awful sudden the engine 
 
 came. . . . 
 . . . Whistle the box for the signal. . . . Married to 
 
 her at ten. 
 
 . . . Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy 
 name." 
 
 Mayhap there 's a hitch in the signal wire, 
 Or the other points are drawn,
 
 138 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 But a red stain gleams on the deadly flange, 
 And a night-shift man is gone 
 
 And the bride to be has changed her robe 
 For a mourning dress at dawn.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 139 
 
 A LAST WISH 
 
 (From the German of Sturm.) 
 
 WHEN my heart has ceased for ever beating out 
 the dirge of time, 
 Lay me by some quiet river, 'neath the ivy spray and 
 
 thyme, 
 
 Place no fading, fragrant roses, o'er the dew-be- 
 sprinkled moss, 
 
 For the weary sleeper chooses but the evergreen and 
 cross.
 
 140 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 DREAMINGS 
 
 THE bog blossom's golden pistil, 
 The shimmering torrent's crystal 
 
 Fling of its sapphire waters, crested with foam-drift 
 white, 
 
 The moorland and scent of the musky 
 Wild flower borne on the dusky 
 
 Wings of the wandering breezes that carry the starry 
 night, 
 
 Come with dreams of the wondrous olden 
 Times, when fancy's golden 
 
 Wand lay o'er my boyhood, filling my mind with 
 joy 
 
 I can see the moor and the dimly 
 Waving gorse, and grimly 
 
 The strong man smiles at the yearning that made the 
 life of the boy. 
 
 Ghosts of the olden faces, 
 
 Voices from silent places, 
 
 Eyes that are filled with laughter, eyes that with tears 
 are wet, 
 
 Into the days so gloomy 
 
 Come in my musings to me 
 One who has ne'er forgotten, one who can ne'er forget.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 141 
 
 MATER DOLOROSA 
 
 HE raised the latch iv his father's door, 
 An' went, the dark look on his face - 
 I wait an' wait him ivermore, 
 On him I wait for ivermore, 
 As not a wan can fill his place. 
 
 The kine go east at dawn iv day, 
 
 In the cold grey dawn I tell my beads, 
 
 But out in the wurP an' miles away, 
 
 An' miles an' miles so far away 
 My Fergus lives an' niver heeds. 
 
 The kine come back to me at eve, 
 But still he never comes anigh; 
 Through all the night I pray an' grieve, 
 Through all the long, black night I grieve, 
 An' pray to God, an' cry an' cry. 
 
 An' " Mary pity me," I pray, 
 
 I pray to God, " Thy will be done," 
 
 But more to her my prayers I say, 
 
 To Mary, Mother, more I say, 
 For long ago she lost her Son. 
 
 I look in the fire an' think an' sing, 
 
 An' sing the songs he liked to hear, 
 An' often to my mind I bring 
 His form an' face, so well I bring, 
 I think that he is very near.
 
 142 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 I weep thro' all the lonely night, 
 
 An' pray an' pray upon my knees, 
 That maybe with the morrow's light 
 He '11 come back, with the morrow's light 
 For Mary, Mother, hears an' sees.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 143 
 
 UNFULFILLED 
 
 THERE is dew upon the meadows brightly glanc- 
 ing in the morn, 
 
 And a blush of softest crimson comes across the wav- 
 ing corn, 
 And the waters brightly gleaming journey onward to 
 
 the sea, 
 
 But nought fulfils the promise that the Springtime 
 made to me. 
 
 'T is the olden, olden story, with its hope and with 
 
 its pain, 
 Loved awhile with deep devotion, never to be loved 
 
 again 
 Oft again will gentle Springtime paint the flower 
 
 and tint the tree, 
 But the soft-voiced Spring will never bring its 
 
 second hopes to me. 
 
 Oft will mem'ry's fairy musings light upon the past 
 
 again, 
 Ere the spell of love was broken by the alchemy of 
 
 pain 
 We were young, and we were happy, trusting in the 
 
 future we 
 But the present 's full of sorrow, and the sorrow falls 
 
 on me.
 
 144 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 There is dew upon the meadows brightly glancing in 
 
 the morn, 
 And a crimson blush of promise rises on the waving 
 
 corn, 
 And the earth with hope is pregnant; howsoever it 
 
 may be, 
 It can ne'er fulfil the promise that the Springtime 
 
 made to me.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 145 
 
 THE VALLEY 
 
 A FAIRY-LIKE valley, with grim mountains 
 hiding it, 
 
 Peacefully sleeping 'mong meadow-lands fair, 
 A river of carmine and silver dividing it, 
 
 And scent of the wild-flowers filling the air. 
 Never a grey mist comes earthwards enshrouding it, 
 
 There never weepeth the cypress or yew, 
 Only the night-shadows lovingly clouding it, 
 Or trellised cirrus with stars peeping through. 
 
 Up by the braes, there the heather bells cluster, 
 
 Where the wind-flower blooms and the gorse-blos- 
 
 soms be 
 Guarding the lane, see the bright daisies muster 
 
 The starry battalions by hedgerow and tree. 
 Over the sedges a streamlet is flinging its 
 
 Frivolous waters in vermeil-tinged spray, 
 Over the fallow a wild bird is singing its 
 
 Song of delight to the ears of the day. 
 
 A woodland is there and the blackberries grow in it, 
 
 And grey gnarled oaks that the ages have bent, 
 Blossoms as white and as pure as the snow in it, 
 
 Fair as the stars in the deep firmament. 
 A shadowy pool where the green water-cresses are 
 
 Languidly floating in sensuous rest, 
 Is hidden 'mid ferns that with tremulous tresses are 
 
 Playing with glee in the breath of the west.
 
 146 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 A valley of dreams, with the dim mountains hiding it, 
 Streamlets of silver through meadow-lands fair, 
 
 A river of carmine and sapphire dividing it, 
 And scent of the wild flowers rilling the air.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 147 
 
 A TALE OF THE BOGLAND 
 
 TIS meself that hates the city, an' the hurry, an' 
 the din 
 
 An' I wish that I was out of it, its worry an' its sin, 
 For me mind is on the bogland, when the day is drear 
 
 an' dim ; 
 
 I could be happy all me life, if I was back with him. 
 But the wurl is up agin' me, an' so bitter is me heart, 
 For he is on the bogland yet, an' I am far apart. 
 
 'T is meself that loved the bogland stretchin' out agin' 
 
 the sky, 
 With the summer flowers a-blowin' an' the peat-stacks 
 
 gettin' dry; 
 There was dew upon the heather at the dawnin' o' the 
 
 day, 
 An' the rushes in the marshes ever sung their sleepy 
 
 lay, 
 An' he told me in the gloamin' that I won his manly 
 
 heart, 
 But he is on the bogland yet, an' I am far apart. 
 
 'T is meself that loved to linger when the big red sun 
 
 went down, 
 An' the purple heavens rested on the bogland lone 
 
 an' brown; 
 I told him when I met him that I loved the evenin' 
 
 air, 
 Tho' glorious the evenin' well I knew he would be 
 
 there,
 
 148 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 An' he loved me with devotion, an' he pressed me to 
 
 his heart, 
 But he is on the bogland yet, an' I am far apart. 
 
 'T is meself regrets the hour that I met the stranger 
 
 there, 
 
 But he had got a manner fine an' such a pleasant air; 
 He told me of the wonder sights an' glories of the 
 
 town 
 Until me eyes grew weary of the bogland 's waste of 
 
 brown, 
 But though the strangers' halls are fine, mine is a 
 
 broken heart, 
 For he is on the bogland yet, an' I am far apart.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 149 
 
 LONGINGS 
 
 (Burns model lodging-house, 1910.) 
 
 THERE is clatter on the pavement, there is hurry 
 in the street, 
 
 The curtains of the night are dropping down, 
 The heart-throbs of the city clang with dull insistent 
 
 beat, 
 
 The gas lights glimmer faintly thro' the town 
 The ten-hour shift is laboured, and the gaffer's voice 
 
 is still, 
 
 And my thoughts go o'er the ocean surge afar, 
 To the meadow and the river and the boreen and the 
 
 hill, 
 And the little lime-washed cottage in Kilcar. 
 
 I have seen the crimson dawning of a Spanish morn- 
 ing glow, 
 
 I have cowered before the menace of the wild, 
 I have seen the sapphire sunlight tint the everlasting 
 
 snow 
 
 Where December's virgin granaries are piled, 
 I have heard the mountain torrents hurtle riotous in 
 
 wrath, 
 
 I have tramped the roads to London and to Rome, 
 But I 'd rather have my childhood and the narrow 
 
 moorland path, 
 
 The path that leads to happiness and home. 
 I am sitting by the hot-plate and my comrades talk 
 
 about 
 
 The things they Ve done and which they should n't 
 do,
 
 150 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 I have been their pal in sinning, and I Ve got to grin 
 
 it out, 
 
 And the harvest of my oats is overdue 
 'T is not so much the slaving in the sewerage of life, 
 
 'T is not so much the toiling and the wet, 
 'T is not so much the curbing of my hatred of the 
 
 strife, 
 But the shattered dreams I never can forget. 
 
 The shrines the world has broken were the shrines 
 at which I knelt, 
 
 And the faith I cherished so it laughed to shame, 
 But God alone in Heaven knows the sufferings I felt, 
 
 When I sold my youth's ideals for a name, 
 And pawned my simple virtues for a meed of evil 
 praise, 
 
 Ah, I pledged them where I never could redeem, 
 Tho' to many it was merely just a love of newer ways, 
 
 To me it was the waking from a dream. 
 
 They are rough and rugged fellows, my companions 
 
 sworn and true, 
 
 And maybe I am rough and rude as they 
 But oh, heavens ! how they 'd mock me, if by chance 
 
 they ever knew 
 
 That I hankered for a cabin miles away 
 Where it stands above the shingle that the waters 
 
 whirl upon, 
 
 As they race across the sandhill and the bar 
 That I long for it by night, dreaming by the hot-plate 
 
 bright, 
 My father's homely cottage in Kilcar.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 151 
 
 GOING HOME 
 
 (Doherty's shack, 1909.) 
 
 I'M going back to Glenties when the harvest fields 
 are brown, 
 
 And the Autumn sunset lingers on my little Irish 
 town, 
 
 When the gossamer is shining where the moorland 
 blossoms blow 
 
 I '11 take the road across the hills I tramped so long 
 ago 
 
 'T is far I am beyond the seas, but yearning voices call, 
 
 " Will you not come back to Glenties, and your wave- 
 washed Donegal ? " 
 
 I Ve seen the hopes of childhood stifled by the hand of 
 
 time, 
 I Ve seen the smile of innocence become the frown of 
 
 crime, 
 I Ve seen the wrong rise high and strong, I Ve seen 
 
 the fair betrayed, 
 Until the faltering heart fell low, the brave became 
 
 afraid 
 But still the cry comes out to me, the homely voices 
 
 call, 
 From the Glen among the highlands of my ancient 
 
 Donegal. 
 
 Sure, I think I see them often, when the night is on 
 
 the town, 
 The Braes of old Strasala, and the homes of Carrig- 
 
 doun
 
 152 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 There 's a light in Jimmy Lynch's house, a shadow on 
 the blind, 
 
 I often watched the shadow, for 'twas Mary in be- 
 hind, 
 
 And often in the darkness, 't is myself that sees it all, 
 
 For I cannot help but dreaming of the folk in Donegal. 
 
 So I '11 hie me back to Glenties when the harvest comes 
 again, 
 
 And the kine are in the pasture and the berries in the 
 lane, 
 
 Then they '11 give me such a handshake that my heart 
 will leap with joy, 
 
 When a father and a mother welcome back their way- 
 ward boy. 
 
 So I 'm going back to Glenties when the autumn 
 showers fall, 
 
 And the harvest home is cheery in my dear old 
 Donegal.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 153 
 
 THE RETURN 
 
 THE boy came home from a foreign land, 
 Weary and wan, with his staff in hand ; 
 Five years' absence had left their trace 
 On golden hair, and on sunny face. 
 His gait was weary, his limbs were sore; 
 His youthful friends knew him no more. 
 The grey-haired padre passed him by 
 Unrecognised. With a heedless eye 
 The toll gatekeeper saw him pass and go 
 Up the dusty road, but in years ago, 
 The boy was the dearest friend he had, 
 But the tollman's eyes with the years grew bad. 
 As fair as of old 'neath her summer hat, 
 At the cottage door his sweetheart sat, 
 But the white dust rose from the road on high, 
 And she knew him not as he passed her by. 
 He entered his home with footsteps slow 
 His friends forgot him, would his parents know? 
 " God bless you, stranger," the father cries, 
 But the sun shone strong in the old man's eyes. 
 But the mother wept on his neck with joy 
 " My son, my son, my wandering boy."
 
 154 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 HOME 
 
 I'M back again in Glenties and the Autumn wind 
 is blowing, 
 
 The silver-sandalled evening skips across the moun- 
 tains high, 
 But the bogland flowers are fading where of old I 
 
 watched them growing, 
 
 And the lean leaves of Lammas tide are whirling thro' 
 the sky. 
 
 The bogland flowers are fading, and I mark them as 
 a token 
 
 Of the early hopes I cherished to my sorrow and re- 
 gret ; 
 
 The silver cord is loosened, and the golden bowl is 
 broken, 
 
 And another heart is wearisome and longing to forget. 
 
 The slender threads of gossamer are shining on the 
 
 heather, 
 The little brooks are tumbling as they hurry to and 
 
 fro, 
 I tramp along the boreen that we tramped of old 
 
 together, 
 My love and I together in the days of long ago. 
 
 The road across the moorland sure it 's twisting an' 
 
 it 's turning 
 Round the braes of old Strasala and the heights of 
 
 Carrigdoun,
 
 Songs of the Dead End 155 
 
 But in the mellow Autumn dusk one lamp has ceased 
 
 from burning, 
 And a hearth is cold and cheerless on the way to 
 
 Glenties town. 
 
 I '11 leave my home again and I '11 bid good-bye to- 
 morrow, 
 
 And I '11 pass the little churchyard and the tomb 
 a-near the wall, 
 
 I have lived so much for love I can hardly live for 
 sorrow 
 
 By the grave that holds my colleen in a glen of 
 Donegal.
 
 156 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 THE DEPARTED 
 
 DOWN from the open spaces where the banshee 
 wails to the moon, 
 From the lonely moorland places where the witches 
 
 hold domain, 
 Like a ghost of the past the midnight blast wails at my 
 
 window pane, 
 
 Out of the night and the silence it comes to my window 
 pane, 
 
 Full of a longing vain 
 It has wafted thro' her burial shroud, and the matted 
 
 coils of her hair, 
 Where the ghouls of the gloom foregather over the 
 
 tomb wherein 
 She moulders away to the senseless clay she who 
 
 was free from sin. 
 
 Heaven! the grave and its horrors, ugly and dark as 
 sin, 
 
 And the beautiful maid therein! 
 
 Sunlight and moonlight and starlight, interblent with 
 the dew, 
 
 The modesty of the passion flower, the youthful, hope- 
 ful glow 
 
 She was greater to me than the world to be, than any- 
 thing mortals know, 
 
 Greater by far than life or death, or aught that the 
 mortals know 
 
 In this evil-starred world below.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 157 
 
 And the weeping wind in the darkness lingers around 
 
 her tomb, 
 Presses her clay cold tresses and lips where my lips 
 
 have lain, 
 And I hear it say in its wistful way When do we 
 
 meet again? 
 When do you meet your olden love and keep your 
 
 tryst again? 
 
 Says the wind at the window pane.
 
 158 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 HEROES 
 
 What is a man? Not ours to ask, 
 
 Not ours to make reply. 
 But from Southampton to the Clyde 
 
 Can Britain testify 
 That they are men and more than men 
 
 Who know the way to die. 
 
 THE little blue fox has seen it break apart from 
 the riven floe, 
 
 The little blue fox of the Arctic waste that seeks its 
 food in the snow ; 
 
 On gale-gored beach and wave-washed cliff the bear 
 has seen it reel, 
 
 The polar bear as it left its lair to hunt for the frozen 
 seal. 
 
 The lone moose bull on some outcast cape has won- 
 dered to see it pass, 
 
 As it shuffled the snow off its feeding grounds and 
 sought for the meagre grass. 
 
 The sealer scurried from out its track, and the fright- 
 ened whaler fled, 
 
 For the derelict berg on the fishing seas is a thing of 
 fear and dread. 
 
 'T was battered and worn by icy waves and swept by 
 their madd'ning wrath, 
 
 And the Northern Lights came out at night to glare 
 on its lonely path.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 159 
 
 But ever and on 'neath the dusk and dawn to the 
 
 southern seas it bore, 
 With the lean locked lands of the north astern and 
 
 the trackless seas before. 
 
 Proudly she swung from the crowded pier, as the 
 
 mooring chains ran free, 
 Virgin pure from the Belfast docks, to the olden trail 
 
 of the sea. 
 As the music swelled from the fading beach, the 
 
 pounding screws replied, 
 And the grey, lank waves went gliding by, an arm's 
 
 reach overside. 
 Alas! for the joy of the lover and maid, alas! for the 
 
 children gay 
 The little blue fox on the Arctic waste is safer by 
 
 far than they. 
 
 West! and the English fields grew dim, and the coast- 
 wise lights shone clear. 
 
 Say, did they laugh on the crowded decks, and the 
 doom so very near? 
 
 West! and the coastwise lights gave out, and the stars 
 of heaven shone, 
 
 And the sailor watched through the midnight hour, 
 aloof, apart, alone. 
 
 South ! 'neath the sinister polar star the death-bearing 
 
 berg went forth. 
 Oh! they who sail on herded seas should dread the 
 
 Doom of the North. 
 May Heaven pity the sailor man, when the Northern 
 
 Doom 's abroad, 
 For the ship is built by the human hand, the berg by 
 
 the hand of God.
 
 160 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 The stars looked down from the lonely sky as they 
 
 looked on the polar snow 
 Where the bear had eaten the little blue fox it killed 
 
 by the Arctic floe. 
 
 Say, was the joke in the stateroom heard, the laugh 
 on the maiden's lips? 
 
 Lord of the waves! have pity on men who go down to 
 the sea in ships. 
 
 Say, did the grimy stoker smile in the heat of the fur- 
 nace breath? 
 
 We do not know, but this we know, he laughed in 
 the face of Death. 
 
 Say, did the lover hurry and fret to come to his sweet- 
 heart's side? 
 
 We only know, when the davits swung, he gallantly 
 stood aside. 
 
 And some there were, whose life and work was much 
 misunderstood, 
 
 But in the hour that tried their souls, we know their 
 death was good. 
 
 And greater by far than deeds of war or right or a 
 grand mistake 
 
 Is a life that is given in sacrifice for a child or a 
 woman's sake. 
 
 What is a man? Not ours to ask, 
 
 Nor yet to make reply. 
 But from Southampton to the Clyde 
 
 Can Britain testify 
 That they are men and more than men 
 
 Who know the way to die.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 161 
 
 THE OLD LURE 
 
 (Fleet Street, 1912.) 
 
 WHEN the gaunt night covers the city, 
 And the fog drifts down the wind, 
 I sit in my study thinking 
 Of the pals I left behind; 
 And the old lure of the old life 
 Enters into my mind. 
 
 I 'm sick of the books before me, 
 And the sorry lore that they hold; 
 
 And I long for the full-blooded lusty youth, 
 That passed like a tale that 's told. 
 
 Oh! the old life is the sweetest life; 
 And my heart goes back to the old 
 
 Dibble and drift and drill, 
 
 Ratchet and rail and rod, 
 Shovel and spanner and screw, 
 
 Hard-hafted hammer and hod, 
 The rattle of wheels on the facing points, 
 
 And the smell of the rain-washed sod. 
 
 The call of a wondrous past 
 
 Is throbbing in my heart-strings, 
 
 The danger-lights aflare 
 
 Where the hooded signal swings, 
 
 The clash of the closing blades, 
 As the straining point-rod springs.
 
 1 62 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 The old friend is the best friend, 
 
 He who has stood the test: 
 The old song is the sweetest song, 
 
 Sweeter than all the rest. 
 And the old life that I left behind 
 
 Is far and away the best. 
 
 When I go back to the old pals, 
 'T is a glad, glad boy I '11 be ; 
 
 With them will I share the doss-house bunk, 
 And join their revels with glee ; 
 
 And the lean men of the lone shacks 
 Shall share their tucker with me. 
 
 My hobnailed bluchers I shall put on, 
 
 Firm in welt and vamp, 
 And get me moleskin and corduroy, 
 
 Proof to the dirt and damp, 
 And sweat on the shift with the navvy-men 
 
 And doss again with the tramp. 
 
 Where the sunsets flame on the offside track 
 
 Amber and cochineal, 
 Where the dawn breaks, a waking rose, 
 
 I '11 beg and starve and- steal, 
 Or hash with the stiff-lipped nawy-men, 
 
 And feel as I used to feel. 
 
 'T is oh ! for the hot-plate reeking red, 
 When the naphtha lamps are lit, 
 
 As the jokes go round the gambling school 
 Told with a ready wit, 
 
 The well-won rest of a slavish day, 
 The joy and glamour of it!
 
 Songs of the Dead End 163 
 
 Sick indeed of the city am I, 
 
 Its make-believe and its show, 
 The roar and rush of the crowded streets 
 
 Where men run to and fro. 
 For I 've hashed in the drift for seven year, 
 
 And back to the drift I '11 go, 
 Back to the men of the lone lank lands 
 
 And the pals of long ago.
 
 164 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 THE LAST RHYME, SAVE ONE 
 
 I have gathered a poise of other men's flowers, and nothing 
 but the thread that binds them is mine own. MONTAIGNE. 
 
 I'VE sung in a wayward fashion 
 The song of a rugged heart, 
 With less of power than of passion, 
 
 With more of desire than art, 
 Tales of roving and roaming, 
 
 Stories of daring done, 
 While ye wait for the poet coming 
 The singer of later on. 
 
 From drear and deserted places, 
 
 Where the wastes of creation lie, 
 Where the pitiless hail-cloud races 
 
 Over the merciless sky, 
 On the offside of desolation 
 
 When the fog is fetid and dense, 
 In the watchman's reeking station 
 
 Guarding the sliprail fence, 
 Tales of the great unholy, 
 
 Lazily, lovingly, long, 
 I Ve gathered in byways lowly 
 
 And fashioned them into song. 
 
 The rime of the roving fellow 
 Who dreams by the midnight fire, 
 
 When the autumn leaves are yellow 
 And sere as his youth's desire.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 165 
 
 The dirge of the loosened boulder 
 
 And the thing that gasps beneath, 
 While the hod is yet on the shoulder, 
 
 The pipe is yet in the teeth, 
 Of the dynamite in the boring, 
 
 That did n't go off when it should, 
 And the pick that went exploring, 
 
 And the pal who left for good 
 For ever the signal reddens, 
 
 For ever is danger near, 
 And the sound of the up-train deadens 
 
 The down-train's roar in the ear. 
 
 Thus have I sung their story, 
 
 That wondrous story of theirs, 
 The navvies' sorrow and glory, 
 
 And death that is unawares, 
 But under the rougher singing, 
 
 In a quivering undertone, 
 Perchance you will hear it ringing, 
 
 A song that is all mine own, 
 Out of its rough environs, 
 
 The roar of the running cars, 
 The lilt of the canting irons, 
 
 The rune of the lifting bars, 
 Apart from the navvy quarrels, 
 
 Card-school riot and song, 
 Manners, merits and morals, 
 
 And chivalry going wrong 
 Perchance that you will discover 
 
 Under the rugged art 
 The voice of the nature lover, 
 
 The song of the singer's heart.
 
 1 66 Songs of the Dead End 
 
 A poet will follow after, 
 
 A poet of later years, 
 To sing of their joy and laughter, 
 
 And weep for their woe and tears, 
 Striking the tuneful lyre 
 
 Greater than me by far, 
 As the rose outrivals the briar, 
 
 As the sun outrivals the star, 
 And the songs I sing in the gloaming 
 
 May turn to nought in the dawn 
 That beams for the singer coming, 
 
 The poet of later on.
 
 Songs of the Dead End 167 
 
 L'ENVOI TO MY PICK AND SHOVEL 
 
 When the last, long shift will be laboured, and the 
 
 lying time will be burst, 
 And we go as picks or shovels, navvies or nabobs, 
 
 must, 
 When you go up on the scrap-heap and I go down 
 
 to the dust, 
 
 Will ever a one remember the times our voices rung, 
 When you were limber and lissome, and I was lusty 
 
 and young? 
 Remember the jobs we 've laboured, the heartful songs 
 
 we 've sung? 
 
 Perhaps some mortal in speaking will give us a kindly 
 
 thought 
 " There is a muck-pile they shifted, here is a place 
 
 where they wrought." 
 But maybe our straining and striving and singing w-ill 
 
 go for nought, 
 
 When you go up on the scrap-heap, and I go down 
 
 to the dust 
 (Little children of labour, food for the worms and 
 
 the rust,) 
 When the last long shift will be laboured and the 
 
 lying time will be burst.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 Form L9-42m-8,'49(B5573)444
 
 A 000 549 695 5