IN A GILDED CAGE
For remember (this our children shall know: we are too near for that knowledge)
Not our mere astonied camps, but Council and Creed and College—
All the obese, unchallenged old things that stifle and overlie us—
Have felt the effects of the lesson we got—an advantage no money could buy us!
. . . . . . .
It was our fault, and our very great fault—and now we must turn it to use;
We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse!
So the more we work and the less we talk the better results we shall get—
We have had an Imperial lesson; it may make us an Empire yet!
Rudyard Kipling: The Lesson.