Francis William Lauderdale Adams Poems

'YES, let Art go, if it must be
That with it men must starve —
If Music, Painting, Poetry
Spring from the wasted hearth!'
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WHO is it speaks of defeat? —
I tell you a Cause like ours
Is greater than defeat can know;
It is the power of powers!
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Men and boys, O fathers, brothers,
Burst these fetters round you bound.
Women, sisters, wives and mothers,
Lift your faces from the ground!
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DO you want to hear a story,
With a nobler praise than 'glory,'
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Death? is it death you give? So be it! O Death,
   thou hast been long my friend, and now thy pale
cool cheek shall have my kiss, while the faint breath
expires on thy still lips, O lovely Death!
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SIR, we approve your curling lip and nose
At this vile sight.
These men, these women are 'brute beasts'? — Who knows,
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I
DEAD in the sheep-pen he lies,
Wrapped in an old brown sail.
The smiling blue sea and the skies
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MADAM, you have done well! Let others with praise unholy,
Speech addressed to a woman who never breathed upon eart ...
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'TIS not when I am here,
In these homeless homes,
Where sin and shame and disease
And foul death comes;
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SWEETEST, in desperate hours
Of clouds and lightning and rain,
You came like a vision of flowers
And summer and song once again:
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