Young Democracy
HARK! Young Democracy from sleep
Our careless sentries raps:
A backwash from the Future’s deep
Our Evil’s foreland laps.
Unknown, these Titans of our Night
Their New Creation make:
Unseen, they toil and love and fight
That glamoured Man may wake.
Knights-errant of the human race,
The Quixotes of to-day,
For man as man they claim a place,
Prepare the tedious way.
They seek no dim-eyed mob’s applause,
Deem base the titled name,
And spurn, for glory of their Cause,
The tawdry nymphs of Fame.
No masks of ignorance or sin
Hide from them you or me:
We’re Man—no colour shames our skin,
No race or caste have we.
The prognathous Neanderthal,
To them, conceals the Bruce;
They see Dan Aesop in the thrall;
From swagmen Christ deduce.
Tho’ butt for lecher’s ribaldry
And scarred by woman’s scorn,
In baby-burdened girl they see
God-motherhood forlorn.
With them, to racial siredom glides
The savage we deprave;
That eunuch brilliant Narses hides:
A Spartacus, that slave.
They Jesus find in manger waif;
In horse-boys Shakespearehood:
And earthquake-Luthers nestling safe
In German miner’s brood.
The God that pulses everywhere
They know fills Satan’s veins;
No felon but they see Him there
Behind His mirror’s stains.
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poem by Bernard O'Dowd
Added by Poetry Lover
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