C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Repudiated Responsibility
By William Watson (1858–1935)
From ‘The Purple East’
I
Uttered so forthright, on their lips who steer
This nation’s course: I had not thought to hear
That word re-echoed by an English thane,
Guilt’s maiden speech when first a man lay slain,—
“Am I my brother’s keeper?” Yet full near
It sounded, and the syllables rang clear
As the immortal rhetoric of Cain.
“Wherefore should we, sirs, more than they—or they—
Unto these helpless reach a hand to save?”
An English thane, in this our English air,
Speaking for England? Then indeed her day
Slopes to its twilight, and for Honor there
Is needed but a requiem and a grave.