Edgar Fawcett

The Yellow Danger (1900)

O Europe, that so long hath spent thy spleen
In tough trans-barrier battlings, till no peace
Has thriven secure, from Denmark sheer to Greece,
Past all thy heavens of hills and grandeurs green,
Beware this menace, dire and unforeseen,
That big with rally of onslaught, ere it cease,
Calamitous through thy lands, at fate’s caprice,
Mongolian millions wildly would convene!

Half yours the blame, Britannia, and half yours,
Omnivorous Russia, since your greeds dared wake
These torpid swarms to furious flame of ill!
Yet shun Japan’s conciliatory lures,
Lest she, the old kith of China, turn and make
This loathsome Yellow Danger yellower still!

Edgar Fawcett (1847-1904) was a prolific novelist who published as well several plays and collections of verse. He was born in New York City and educated at Columbia University, but spent his last years in London, where ‘The Yellow Danger’, dated 1900, appeared in Voices and Visions: Later Verses by Edgar Fawcett (1903).