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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=419061" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Mutiny of the Chains</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">PENAL COLONY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA, 1857</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>THE sun rose o'er dark Fremantle, <br>And the Sentry stood on the wall; <br>Above him, with white lines swinging, <br>The flag-staff, bare and tall: <br>The flag at its foot—the Mutiny Flag— <br>Was always fast to the line,— <br>For its sanguine field was a cry of fear, <br>And the Colony counted an hour a year <br>In the need of the blood-red sign.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The staff and the line, with its ruddy flash, <br>lake a threat or an evil-bode, <br>Were a monstrous whip with a crimson lash, <br>Fit sign for the penal code. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Sentry leant on his rifle, and stood <br>By the mast, with a deep-drawn breath; <br>A stern-browed man, but there heaved a sigh <br>For the sight that greeted his downward eye <br>In the prison-square beneath. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">In yellow garb, in soldier lines,<br>One hundred men in chains;<br>While the watchful warders, sword in hand,<br>With eyes suspicious keenly scanned<br>The links of the living lanes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There, wary eyes met stony eyes,<br>And stony face met stone. <br>There was never a gleam of trust or truce; <br>In the covert thought of an iron loose, <br>Grim warder and ward were one. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Why was it so, that there they stood,—<br>Stern driver and branded slave?<br>Why rusted the gyve in the bondman's blood,<br>No hope for him but the grave?<br>Out of thousands there why was it so<br>That one hundred hearts must feel<br>The bitterest pang of the penal woe,<br>And the grind of a nation's heel?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Why, but for choice—the bondman's choice?<br>They balanced the gains and pains;.<br>They took their chance of the chains.<br>There spake in their hearts a hidden voice<br>Of the blinding joy of a freeman's burst<br>Through the great dim woods. Then the toil accurst;<br>The scorching days and the nights in tears<br>The riveted rings for years and years;<br>They weighed them all—they looked before<br>At the one and other, and spoke them o'er,<br>And they saw what the heart of man must see,<br>That the uttermost blessing is Liberty!<br>Ah, pity them, God! they must always choose,<br>For the life to gain and the death to lose.<br>They dream of the woods and the mountain spring,<br>And they grasp the flower, to clutch the sting.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Even so: they are better than those who bend<br>Like beasts to the lash, and go on to the end<br>As a beast will go, with to-day for a life,<br>And to-morrow a blank. Offer peace and strife<br>To a man enslaved—let him vote for ease<br>And coward labor, and be content;<br>Or let him go out in the front, as these,<br>With their eyes on the doom and the danger, went.<br>And take your choice—the man who remains<br>A self-willed serf, or the one who stains<br>His sudden hand with a drive for light<br>Through a bristling rank and a gloomy night.<br>This man for me—for his heart he'll share<br>With a friend: with a foe, he'll fight him fair.<br>And such as he are in every rank<br>Of the column that moves with a dismal clank<br>And a dead-march step toward the rock-bound place<br>Where the chain-gangs toil—o'er the beetling face<br>Of the cliff that roots in the Swan's deep tide:<br>Steep walls of granite on either side,<br>At the precipice' foot the river wide;<br>Behind them in ranks the warders fall;<br>And above them, the Sentry paces the wall.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Year in, year out, has the Sentry stood<br>On the wall at the foot of the mast.<br>He has turned from the toilers to watch the flood<br>Like, his own slow life go past.<br>He has noted the Chains grow fat and lean;<br>He has sighed for their empty spaces,<br>And thought of the cells where their end had been,<br>Where they lay with their poor dead faces,<br>With never a kiss, or prayer, or knell—<br>They were better at rest in the river;<br>He thinks of the shadow that o'er them fell<br>From the mast with its whip-like quiver;<br>He has seen it tipped with its crimson lash<br>When the mutiny-flood had risen<br>And swept like a sea with an awful swash<br>Through the squares and the vaulted prison.<br>His thoughts are afar with the woeful day,<br>With the ranged dead men and the dying,<br>And slowly he treads till they pass away—<br>Then a pause, and a start, and a scuffling sound,<br>And a glance beneath, at a battle-ground,<br>Where the lines are drawn, and the Chains are found</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Their armed guards defying!<br>A hush of death—and the Sentry stands<br>By the mast, with the halyards tight in his hands,<br>And the Mutiny Flag is flying!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Woe to the weak, to the mutineers!<br>The bolt of their death is driven;<br>A mercy waits on all other tears,<br>But the Chains are never forgiven.<br>Woe to the rebels!—their hands are bare,<br>Their manacled bodies helpless there;<br>Their faces lit with a strange wild light,<br>As if they had fought and had won the fight!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No cry is uttered—upraised no hand;<br>All stilled to a muscle's quiver;<br>One line on the brink of the cliff they stand,<br>Their shadows flung down on the river.<br>The quarry wall is on either side,<br>The blood-red flag high o'er them;<br>But the lurid light in their eyes defied<br>The gathering guards before them.<br>No parley is held when the Chains revolt:<br>Grimly silent they stand secure<br>On the outward lip of the embrasure;<br>Waiting fierce-eyed for the fatal bolt.<br>A voice from the guard, in a monotone;<br>A voice that was cold and hard as stone: —<br>'Make ready! Fire!'<br>O Christ, the cry<br>From the manacled men! not fear to die, <br>Or whine for mercy; rebelled they stood, <br>Well knowing the price of revolt was blood; <br>Well knowing—but each one knew that he <br>Would sell his blood for his liberty! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Unwarned by a word, uncalled, unshriven, <br>They dare by a look—and the doom is given. <br>They raise their brows in the wild revolt,<br>And God's wrath flames in the fierce death-bolt;<br>God's wrath?—nay, man's; God never smote<br>A rebel dead whose swelling throat<br>Was full with protest. Hear, then smite;<br>God's justice weighs not shrieks the right.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Make ready! Fire!'<br>Again outburst<br>The horror and shame for the deed accurst! <br>O, cry of the weak, as the hot blood calls <br>From the burning wound, and the stricken falls <br>With his face in the dust; and the strong one stands, <br>With scornful lips and ensanguined hands; <br>O, blood of the weak, unbought, unpriced, <br>Thy smoke is a piteous prayer to Christ!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They stand on the brink of the cliff—they bend <br>To the dead in their chains; then rise, and send <br>To the murdering muzzles defiant eyes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Make ready! Fire!'<br>The smoke-clouds rise:<br>They are still on the face of the cliff—they bend <br>Once more to the dead—they whisper a word <br>To the hearts in the dust—then, undeterred, <br>They raise their, faces, so grimly set, <br>Till the eyes of slayer and doomed have met. <br>O merciful God, let thy pity rain <br>Ere the hideous lightning leaps again! <br>They have sinned—they have erred—let the living stand <br>They have dared and rued—let thy loving hand <br>Be laid on those brows that bravely face <br>The death that shall wash them of all disgrace! <br>Be swift with pity—O, late, too late! <br>The tubes are leveled—the marksmen wait <br>For the word of doom—the spring is pressed <br>By the nervous finger—the sight is straight— <br>'Make ready!'—<br>Why falters the dread command? <br>Why stare as affrighted the armed band? <br>Why lower the rifles from shoulder to hip. <br>Why dies the word on the leader's lip, <br>While the voice that was hard grows husky deep <br>And the face is a-tremble as if to weep? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Chains on the brink of the cliff are lined; <br>The living are bowed o'er the dead—they rise <br>And they face the rifles with burning eyes; <br>Then they bend again, and with one set mind <br>They raise the dead and the wounded raise <br>In their loving arms with words of praise <br>And tender grief for the torturing wounds. <br>One backward step with a burdened tread— <br>They bear toward the-precipice wounded and dead— <br>Then they turned on the cliff to front the guard <br>With faces like men that have died in fight; <br>Their brows were raised as if proud reward <br>Were theirs, and their eyes had a victor's light. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">They spoke not a word, but stood sublime<br>In their somber strength, and the watchers saw<br>That they smiled as they looked, and their words were heard <br>As they spoke to the dying a loving word. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">They were Men at last—they knew naught of crime; <br>They were masters and makers of life and law. <br>They turned from the guard that quailed and shrank <br>From the gleaming eyes of the burdened rank; <br>They turned on the cliff, and a sob was heard <br>As they looked far down on the darkened river; <br>They raised their eyes to the sky—they grasped <br>The dead to their breasts, while the wounded clasped <br>The necks of the brothers who bore their weight—<br>Then they sprang from the cliff, as a horse will spring<br>For his life from a precipice—sprang to death<br>In silence and sternness—one deep breath,<br>As they plunged, of liberty, thrilled their souls,<br>And then—the Chains were at rest forever!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=John+Boyle+O%27Reilly">John Boyle O'Reilly</a><div class=q>
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THE sun rose o'er dark Fremantle, 
And the Sentry stood on the wall; 
Above him, with white lines swinging, 
The flag-staff, bare and tall: 
The flag at its foot—the Mutiny Flag— 
Was always fast to th..."></div>
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