A land of nameless government – 1919

The Catholic Press 15th May, 1919  p. 18 (abridged)

You ask me why, tho’ ill at ease,
Within this region I subsist,
Whose spirits falter in the mist,
And languish for the purple seas.

Within this land which bondmen till
Who cannot call their minds their own,
But into dungeons straight are thrown
If they but speak the things they will.

A land of nameless government,
That hath a wide and dark renown;
Where Freedom hourly shrinken’s down
From precedent to precedent.

Where faction always gathers head
Where by degrees to fullness wrought
The strength of some repressive thought
Hath time and space to work and spread.

Where banded bigots persecute
Opinion, and produce a time
When honest thought is civil crime,
And individual freedom mute.

Yet ’tis the land of mist and wrong,
Wild wind! that claims my homage high;
And I will hear before I die
The shout of her triumphant song.
S.