“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!”
“Poor lads! And you for others’ wrongs and sins Whose dead past greed and lust did never wince To make your fathers, mothers, and now you Miserable fiends in hell, must expiate, since
“We the more guilty, we the strong, the few, Whose triumph thrusts you down into the stew, Fear lest our victims rise and rend us, fear This problem mad we will not listen to!
“Victims, with her your fellow-victim here, Blind, deaf, dumb beasts, the hour shall yet appear When men, when justicers resolute-terrible, you Shall speak and all men tremble as they hear!”
“‘Tyranny’? Yes, that’s it! We are not afraid To face the word that’s fit For what we’ve said!
“It’s the tyranny of the Many, That will not allow There’s the right to any To seek wealth and power now
“At the expense of the Many. Say, that one or this Works ‘over hours’: then he Drives us all to the abyss,
“Where, struggling together One rises again While the rest all together Are stifled and slain.