Our Duty

Bernard O'Dowd 1866 (Beaufort) – 1953



Yet what were Love if man remains unfree,
   And woman's sunshine sordid merchandise:
If children's Hope is blasted ere they see
   Its shoots of youth from out the branchlets rise:
   If thought is chained, and gagged is Speech, and Lies
Enthroned as Law befoul posterity,
   And haggard Sin's ubiquitous disguise
Insults the face of God where'er men be?

Ay, what were Love, my love, did we not love
   Our stricken brothers so, as to resign
   For Its own sake, the foison of Its dower:
That, so, we two may help them mount above
   These layers of charnel air in which they pine,
   To seek with us the Presence and the Power?

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

35 sec read
60

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCBBCBC DEADEA
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 637
Words 113
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 8, 6

Bernard O'Dowd

Bernard Patrick O'Dowd was an Australian activist, educator, poet, journalist, and author of several law books and poetry books. O'Dowd worked as an assistant-librarian and later Chief Parliamentary Draughtsman in the Supreme Court at Melbourne for 48 years; he was also a co-publisher and writer for the radical paper Tocsin. Bernard O'Dowd lived to age 87. more…

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