A political poet
Jul. 13th, 2015 10:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sheenaghpugh" Some of his verses provoked resentment in Conservative circles" (Wikipedia on Francis Lauderdale Adams): well, you couldn't wish for a better epitaph than that, really. Adams (1862-93), brought up in England but emigrated to Australia, was one of those turn-of-the-century Christian Socialists for whom religion and politics more or less merged. There is, inevitably, quite a lot of fin-de-siècle high-flown over-poetic style about some of his work, but then every so often he comes up with a brief gem like "To the Christians", insisting on Christ as son of a carpenter rather than of a god:
TAKE, then, your paltry Christ,
Your gentleman God.
We want the carpenter's son,
With his saw and hod.
We want the man who loved
The poor and oppressed,
Who hated the Rich man and King
And the Scribe and the Priest.
We want the Galilean
Who knew cross and rod.
It's your 'good taste' prefers
A bastard 'God!'
or "Hagar", in which the trials of Abraham's handmaid are updated but the hoped-for divine intervention never materializes:
SHE went along the road,
Her baby in her arms,
The night and its alarms
Made deadlier her load.
Her shrunken breasts were dry;
She felt the hunger bite.
She lay down in the night,
She and the child, to die.
But it would wail, and wail,
And wail. She crept away.
She had no word to say,
Yet still she heard it wail.
She took a jagged stone;
She wished it to be dead.
She beat it on the head;
It only gave one moan.
She has no word to say;
She sits there in the night.
The east sky glints with light,
And it is Christmas Day!
Poor chap shot himself aged 30, during a TB-caused haemorrhage which would probably have killed him anyway. I have a soft spot for him, as you can probably tell.
TAKE, then, your paltry Christ,
Your gentleman God.
We want the carpenter's son,
With his saw and hod.
We want the man who loved
The poor and oppressed,
Who hated the Rich man and King
And the Scribe and the Priest.
We want the Galilean
Who knew cross and rod.
It's your 'good taste' prefers
A bastard 'God!'
or "Hagar", in which the trials of Abraham's handmaid are updated but the hoped-for divine intervention never materializes:
SHE went along the road,
Her baby in her arms,
The night and its alarms
Made deadlier her load.
Her shrunken breasts were dry;
She felt the hunger bite.
She lay down in the night,
She and the child, to die.
But it would wail, and wail,
And wail. She crept away.
She had no word to say,
Yet still she heard it wail.
She took a jagged stone;
She wished it to be dead.
She beat it on the head;
It only gave one moan.
She has no word to say;
She sits there in the night.
The east sky glints with light,
And it is Christmas Day!
Poor chap shot himself aged 30, during a TB-caused haemorrhage which would probably have killed him anyway. I have a soft spot for him, as you can probably tell.
