free-verse45 lines
Mount Rennie." {95}
by Francis William Lauderdale Adams(The Australian Press speaks).
"Kill them! Yes, hang them all!
They are fiends, just that!
And we're all agreed fiends should be sent
To a place that's hot.
"They were fiends, too, of themselves;
They delighted in it!
It's all their fault, their own fault!
Don't listen a minute!
"Don't let anyone talk
About 'fatality,' 'lot,'
That sort of talk (excuse us!)
Is just damned rot.
"You and I, p'raps, are what we're made.
If I'm dying of phthisis,
It's because my father passed on
To me what the price is
"Of his excesses, and I,
Overworked, come off worse.
Just so; but, with these young fiends,
It's quite the reverse.
"Their homes were happy and bright,
(All are in Australia).
Their parents were good, kind, wise:
No breath of failure
"Can be breathed on their education,
Their childhood's surroundings,
The healthy training that gives
Youth morality's groundings.
"Those people who say
That the larrikins come
From that God-spat-out-thing,
The Australian 'home' -
"The narrow harsh rule
Of base mean parents,
Whose played-out ideas drive
All of good and of fair thence:
"That our prostitute girls
Come from just the same Cause -
Why, these idiots know nothing
Of facts, social laws!
"Kill them, then! Hang them all!
We (like God) must be just.
It was all their own faults,
Not ours. . . . Dust to dust!"