II.
Explains—a task few modern penmen shirk—
The sociology of this great work.
God bless Democracy, George Bernard Shaw,
And William Dunn, our sanest, saintliest hatter!
God bless that great anomaly, the Law;
Aye, may our knights on hoarded tea wax fatter!
God bless Sir Arthur Yapp’s unfailing jaw,
Lord Lansdowne’s pen, and brave Horatio’s chatter!
And—lest in England Bolos quite prevail—
God bless King Northcliffe and his “Daily Mail!”
Long live the old Press—“Times,” “D. T.,” “Spectator”!
Long live the New—“Age,” “Europe,” “Statesman,” “Witness”!
Long live each acti temporis laudator!
Long live Lloyd George in unmolested Pitt-ness!
Long live “The Nation,” facile demonstrator
Of everybody’s—save its own—unfitness!
Long live Valera, Carson, Devlin, Plunkett!
Long live the lads who fight, the cads who funk it!
Long live our German banks, sub duce Plender!
Long may our railways rule our bounding sea!
Long may impatient Cuthberts paw their fender,
What time their patient Phyllis pours their tea!
Long life to each investor and each spender!
Long live the Staff! Long live the A.S.E.!
So long as England’s in the melting-pot,
A prudent bard must sing, “Long live the lot!”
For who shall say—at close of Armageddon,
When the world’s finished beggaring its neighbour,
When the last shell’s been fired, the last pig fed on—
If we’ll be ruled by Capital or Labour:
If a Welsh harp shall twang part-songs of Seddon,
While Simon pipes a compromising tabor:
Or whether every stalwart War-Loan-lender’s son
Will find his Empire dividends signed “Henson”?
Not I: not all the better men who fought
While dilutees preserved their precious skin:
Not those great early dead, whose single thought
Ran—“England: Germany: we’ve got to win.”
Poor simple souls, of H. G. Wells untaught,
They never realized their next-of-kin
Would read how they had died to make life cheerier
For the dear blacks in Briningized Nigeria.
Public, forgive your fool; if now and then—
Black bubbles on the verse’s stream—appear
Thoughts of our worn, unlettered fighting-men;
If sometimes, through the grease-paint’s gay veneer,
Truth shews—a wrinkled hag. The traitor pen
Forgets how blood is cheap and paper dear:
And I’m no more the blithe, nut-loving squirrel
Who frisked it in the consulship of Birrell.
Which is, perchance, the reason why my mind
Turns oft to those dear days, now dead as mutton;
When Haldane’s soul with Bethmann-Hollweg dined;
And no one ploughed up golf-greens, sown by Sutton,
To bed the humble tuber’s sprouting rind;
Or dashed off shorthand billets-doux in Dutton,
Or changed a blear-eyed pauper to a swell man
In six short weeks of concentrated Pelman:
Why now—sad minstrel in un-Sandoned sack-cloth—
I sing the twilight of the times I knew.
No more our glaring footlights blurr a back-cloth
Woven of misery and hung askew;
For Time, stern judge of Us, has donned his black cloth,
And to the Mob delivered up the Few ...
Unless, of course, the Mob’s but swapped its Peers
For a worse dynasty—of profiteers.
God knows, we had our faults—greed, blindness, pride.
God also knows we had a dashed good time.
Were they the worse for that—our boys who died,
By earth and air and sea in every clime?
God knows! But if ghost-feet still strut and side
About their clubs, if ghost-eyes read this rhyme,
I think they’d like their vanished epoch’s swan-song
To be a merry tune, and not a wan song.
So clear the stage, and ring the curtain up!
Once more—ere Empires yield to Leagues of Nations,
And bayonets to Socialistic gup—
Let Beauty, in diaphanous creations,
Ogle the stalls, and subsequently sup
Off iced champagne and ortolan collations....
Whereafter, if my pen won’t bring me pelf,
Damned if I don’t turn Socialist myself!