Punch (93.1887)

THE LAST (SIGNAL) MAN.

Verity in a Vision.

(With Apologies to the Shade of Campbell.)

" The effect of material progress, and of the
growth of mechanieal invention, is to place the
Uvea and interests of an increasing number of
people in the keeping of a Bingle man. Kesponsi-
bility becomes concentrated to a dangerous and a
truly alarming degree."—Times.

Of all dark shapes of human doom,

The lot of darkest dye
Is his whose soul must sole assume
Responsibility !

I saw a vision in my sleep,

The earth had swung: with secular sweep

To the last gulf of Time.
I saw the last of human mould,
Alone, unfriended, unconsoled
As Adam when the night first rolled

O'er Eden's early prime.

The Sun's eye had a sickly glare,

The Earth with age was wan;
The wrecks of shattered thousands were

Around that lonely man.
Some had expired in pain,—its brands
On clammy face and clutching hands,—

In sudden palsy some.
Among them was no sound or tread
Even of Death among the dead,

Pain's very voice was dumb.

Siffl, statue-like, that lone one stood,
With nxed earth-seeking eye,

Silent as a flame-blasted wood
When winds have all swept by.

The last surviving unscathed One I

His face was grey, his race was run,
Cold as antarctic snow,

Unmoved by hopes, untouched by fears,
Left by the tide of human tears
That never more may flow.

He moaned, '1 No more shall man let stand

His power, his pride, his skill;
The arts that made fire, flood, and land

The vassals of his will.
Yet shall J mourn man's vanished sway,
The Systems that have had their day ?

Out on the sordid arts,
The triumphs with which earth ones rang,
The Progress which spared not one pang

To trampled human hearts!

" No; let oblivion's curtain fall

On me too, last of men.
I would not if I could recall

Life's tragedy again.
Its burden I would not bring back,
Responsibility's iron rack

No more shall make me writhe;
Wo lapse of vision, loss of word,
Shall make me feel a man abhorred,
Strew earth with slain as by War's sword

Or Death's relentless scythe.

" No more with weary wandering eyes

I'd watch, where, if I tire,
Hundreds in hideous agonies

May helplessly expire.
No man that breathes mere mortal breath
Alone should stand at odds with Death.

Systems P 0 learning lost!
On nerve, sight, sinew—human all,
And apt to fail at urgent call—
The bitter burden had to fall ;—

Behold at what a cost!

" On me it fell, ah! not on Him,
The Corporate Demon dark,

Whose greed of gain gave systems dim

Capricious action. Hark!
The click, the crash! Nay, never mine-
Thank Heaven!—again to watch the line

With chill and catch of breath.
The knowledge that at last I fly
Thy rack, Responsibility,

Takes all the sting from Death !

" ' Justice' no more shall hale me up

To answer this wild waste
Of human life. That bitter cup

At least I shall not taste.
Go, Sun, and say,—if e'er thy face
Shine on another earthly race,—

On what an ill-paid clod
Man laid Responsibility—
Because its Justice ruled awry,

And Mammon was its god."

Poor Old England!

These are hard times, and the oracles of
the newspapers teem with thrifty sugges-
tions. The last advice to the hard-pressed
agriculturists is, to go in for cultivating
mushrooms and blackberries. What a pro-
spect for the country children! Fancy every
mushroom-meadow tabooed to the early rural
rambler, and all the blackberries strictly
"preserved," in the sense of partridges, not
of plum-jam. And what a fate for the land
of the oak, the apple-tree, the wheat and the
bearded barley, to come down, like tramps and
viUage-urchins, to fungi and bramble-fruits 1

Political Economy. — Lord Rosebeey,
when next in power, will insist on the
Government being "short-handed."