François POIRIER, professeur de civilisation britannique

What cometh here from west to east awending?
And who are these, the marchers stern and slow?
We bear the message that the rich are sending
Aback to those who bade them wake and know.
Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,
But one and all if they would dusk the day.

 We asked them for a life of toilsome earning,
They bade us bide their leisure for our bread;
We craved to speak to tell our woeful learning;
We come back speechless, bearing back our dead.
Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,
But one and all if they would dusk the day.

 They will not learn; they have no ears to hearken.
They turn their faces from the eyes of fate;
Their gay-lit halls shut out the skies that darken.
But, lo! this dead man knocking at the gate.
Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,
But one and all if they would dusk the day.

 Here lies the sign that we shall break our prison;
Amidst the storm he won a prisoner's rest;
But in the cloudy dawn the sun arisen
Brings us our day of work to win the best.
Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,
But one and all if they would dusk the day.

The demonstration in Trafalgar Square on November 13, 1887, in favour of free speech and against the repression in Ireland, was broken up by the police. Three people were killed and it became known as "Bloody Sunday". A week later, a fourth person was killed during a protest against police violence. This was the occasion of a public funeral, on December 18, during which the above poem by William Morris was sung. The poem was then published in Commonweal, then went into book form as part of Poems by the Way, which Morris published in 1891. It was used again on the occasion of Mayday 1892, the first celebration of the Chicago Haymarket martyrs by the newly established "Second" International.

It was set to music by Malcolm Leonard Lawson (1849-1918), a composer who had made a name as an editor and arranger of traditional songs, especially Scottish, and composed new music for the verse translations of Homer and Aeschylus by G.C. Warr in the same year, with illustrations by Walter Crane. The music sheet for "Death Song" has been lost by the British Library and immediately it can be copied from another library, you will find it on this site.

Meanwhile, the portrait of the composer by his brother Francis can be seen at the National Portrait Gallery online.

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