Louise Imogen Guiney

Strikers in Hyde Park

A woof reversed the fatal shuttles weave,
How slow! but never once they slip the thread.
Hither, upon the Georgian idlers’ tread,
Up spacious ways the lindens interleave,
Clouding the royal air since yester-eve,
Come men bereft of time, and scant of bread,
Loud, who were dumb, immortal, who were dead,
Through the cowed world their kingdom to retrieve.
What ails thee, England? Altar, mart, and grange
Dream of the knife by night; not so, not so,
The clear Republic waits the general throe,
Along her noonday mountains’ open range.
God be with both! for one is young to know
Her mother’s rote of evil and of change.