Will you continually deny yourself, you? Will you for ever turn aside? These are not the times, remember, of canary birds—when the thunder growls along the horizon.

O England, do I not know thee—as in a nightmare strangled tied and bound?

Thy poverty—when through thy filthy courts from tangles of matted hair gaunt women with venomous faces look upon me?

When I see the thin joyless faces of their children, and the brick walls scarcely recognisable as brick for dirt, and the broken windows; when I breathe the thick polluted air in which not even plants will live; when oaths and curses are yelled in my ears, and the gibbering face of drink starts upon me at every corner;

When I turn from this and consider throughout the length and breadth of the land, not less but more hateful, the insane greed of riches—of which poverty and its evils are but the necessary obverse and counterpart;

When I see deadly Respectability sitting at its dinner table, quaffing its wine, and discussing the rise and fall of stocks; when I see the struggle, the fear, the envy, the profound infidelity (so profound that it is almost unconscious of itself) in which the moneyed classes live;

When the faces of their children come to me pleading, pleading—every bit as much as the children of the city poor—pleading for one touch of nature: Of children who have been stuffed with lies all their lives, who have been told that they cannot do without this and that and a thousand things—all of which are wholly unnecessary, and a nuisance, (as who should tell one that it were not safe to walk on the naked Earth, but only on ground embarrassed with straw and all manner of rubbish up to one’s knees;)

Of children who have been taught to mix the nonsense manners and diarrhœa of drawing-rooms with their ideals of right and wrong; to despise manual labor and to reverence ridicule; to eat and drink and dress and sleep in unbelief and against all their natural instincts; and in all things to mingle the disgust of repletion with the very thought of pleasure—till their young judgments are confused and their instincts actually cease to be a guide to them;

Of strong healthy boys who positively believe they will starve unless they enter the hated professions held out to them;

When I see avenues of young girls and women, with sideway flopping heads, debarred from Work, debarred from natural Sexuality, weary to death with nothing to do, (and this thy triumph, O deadly respectability discussing stocks!)

When I see, flickering around, miserable spectrums and nostrums of reform—mere wisps devoid of all body—philanthropic chatterboxes, [Nay, I do not hold with you! For if you kill me to death talking to me in a drawing-room, what in the name of heaven are you going to do to the unfortunate in hospital?]

When I hear and see the droning and see-sawing of pulpits; when the vision of perfect vulgarity and commonplaceness arises upon me—of society—and of that which arrogates to itself the sacred name of England;

The puppet dance of gentility—condescension, white hands, unsoiled dress, charitable proprietorship—in the street, the barracks, the church, the shop, the house, the school, the assembly,

In eating drinking and saying Good morning and Good night—of the theory of what it is to be a lady or a gentleman;

Of exclusiveness, and of being in the swim; of the drivel of aristocratic connections; of drawing-rooms and levees and the theory of animated clothespegs generally; of belonging to clubs and of giving pence to crossing-sweepers without apparently seeing them; of helplessly living in houses with people who feed you, dress you, clean you, and despise you; of driving in carriages; of being intellectual; of prancing about and talking glibly on all subjects on the theory of setting things right—and leaving others to do the dirty work of the world; of having read books by the score, and being yet unable to read a single page; of writing, and yet ignorant how to sign your name; of talking about political economy and politics and never having done a single day’s labor in your life; of being a magistrate or a judge and never having committed a common crime, or been in the position to commit one; of being a parson and afraid to be seen toping with Christ in a public; a barrister and to travel in a third class carriage; an officer and to walk with one of your own men;

When I see the sea, spreading, of infidelity, of belief in externals—in money, big guns, laws, views, accomplishments, cheap goods—towncouncilors, cabinet ministers, M.P.’s, generals, judges, bishops—all alike;

When I look for help from the guides and see only a dead waste of aimless abject closeshaven shabby simpering flat pompous peaked punctilious faces:

O England, whither—strangled tied and bound—whither whither art thou come?