LOVE AND SCORN. I. Love, loyallest and lordliest born of things, Immortal that shouldst be, though all else end, In plighted hearts of fearless friend with friend, Whose hand may curb or clip thy plume-plucked wings? Not grief’s nor time’s: though these be lords and kings Crowned, and their yoke bid vassal passions bend, They may not pierce the spirit of sense, or blend Quick poison with the soul’s live watersprings. The true clear heart whose core is manful trust Fears not that very death may turn to dust Love lit therein as toward a brother born, If one touch make not all its fine gold rust, If one breath blight not all its glad ripe corn, And all its fire be turned to fire of scorn. II. Scorn only, scorn begot of bitter proof By keen experience of a trustless heart, Bears burning in her new-born hand the dart Wherewith love dies heart-stricken, and the roof Falls of his palace, and the storied woof Long woven of many a year with life’s whole art Is rent like any rotten weed apart, And hardly with reluctant eyes aloof Cold memory guards one relic scarce exempt Yet from the fierce corrosion of contempt, And hardly saved by pity. Woe are we That once we loved, and love not; but we know The ghost of love, surviving yet in show, Where scorn has passed, is vain as grief must be. III. O sacred, just, inevitable scorn, Strong child of righteous judgment, whom with grief The rent heart bears, and wins not yet relief, Seeing of its pain so dire a portent born, Must thou not spare one sheaf of all the corn, One doit of all the treasure? not one sheaf, Not one poor doit of all? not one dead leaf Of all that fell and left behind a thorn? Is man so strong that one should scorn another? Is any as God, not made of mortal mother, That love should turn in him to gall and flame? Nay: but the true is not the false heart’s brother: Love cannot love disloyalty: the name That else it wears is love no more, but shame.
ON THE DEATH OF RICHARD DOYLE. A light of blameless laughter, fancy-bred, Soft-souled and glad and kind as love or sleep, Fades, and sweet mirth’s own eyes are fain to weep Because her blithe and gentlest bird is dead. Weep, elves and fairies all, that never shed Tear yet for mortal mourning: you that keep The doors of dreams whence nought of ill may creep, Mourn once for one whose lips your honey fed. Let waters of the Golden River steep The rose-roots whence his grave blooms rosy-red And murmuring of Hyblæan hives be deep About the summer silence of its bed, And nought less gracious than a violet peep Between the grass grown greener round his head.
IN MEMORY OF HENRY A. BRIGHT. Yet again another, ere his crowning year, Gone from friends that here may look for him no more. Never now for him shall hope set wide the door, Hope that hailed him hither, fain to greet him here. All the gracious garden-flowers he held so dear, Oldworld English blossoms, all his homestead store, Oldworld grief had strewn them round his bier of yore, Bidding each drop leaf by leaf as tear by tear; Rarer lutes than mine had borne more tuneful token, Touched by subtler hands than echoing time can wrong, Sweet as flowers had strewn his graveward path along. Now may no such old sweet dirges more be spoken, Now the flowers whose breath was very song are broken, Nor may sorrow find again so sweet a song.
A SOLITUDE. Sea beyond sea, sand after sweep of sand, Here ivory smooth, here cloven and ridged with flow Of channelled waters soft as rain or snow, Stretch their lone length at ease beneath the bland Grey gleam of skies whose smile on wave and strand Shines weary like a man’s who smiles to know That now no dream can mock his faith with show, Nor cloud for him seem living sea or land. Is there an end at all of all this waste, These crumbling cliffs defeatured and defaced, These ruinous heights of sea-sapped walls that slide Seaward with all their banks of bleak blown flowers Glad yet of life, ere yet their hope subside Beneath the coil of dull dense waves and hours?
VICTOR HUGO: L’ARCHIPEL DE LA MANCHE. Sea and land are fairer now, nor aught is all the same, Since a mightier hand than Time’s hath woven their votive wreath. Rocks as swords half drawn from out the smooth wave’s jewelled sheath, Fields whose flowers a tongue divine hath numbered name by name, Shores whereby the midnight or the noon clothed round with flame Hears the clamour jar and grind which utters from beneath Cries of hungering waves like beasts fast bound that gnash their teeth, All of these the sun that lights them lights not like his fame; None of these is but the thing it was before he came Where the darkling overfalls like dens of torment seethe, High on tameless moorlands, down in meadows bland and tame, Where the garden hides, and where the wind uproots the heath, Glory now henceforth for ever, while the world shall be, Shines, a star that keeps not time with change on earth and sea.
THE TWILIGHT OF THE LORDS. I. Is the sound a trumpet blown, or a bell for burial tolled, Whence the whole air vibrates now to the clash of words like swords— ‘Let us break their bonds in sunder, and cast away their cords; Long enough the world has mocked us, and marvelled to behold How the grown man bears the curb whence his boyhood was controlled’? Nay, but hearken: surer counsel more sober speech affords: ‘Is the past not all inscribed with the praises of our Lords? Is the memory dead of deeds done of yore, the love grown cold That should bind our hearts to trust in their counsels wise and bold? These that stand against you now, senseless crowds and heartless hordes, Are not these the sons of men that withstood your kings of old? Theirs it is to bind and loose; theirs the key that knows the wards, Theirs the staff to lead or smite; yours, the spades and ploughs and hods: Theirs to hear and yours to cry, Power is yours, O Lords our Gods.’ II. Hear, O England: these are they that would counsel thee aright. Wouldst thou fain have all thy sons sons of thine indeed, and free? Nay, but then no more at all as thou hast been shalt thou be: Needs must many dwell in darkness, that some may look on light; Needs must poor men brook the wrong that ensures the rich man’s right. How shall kings and lords be worshipped, if no man bow the knee? How, if no man worship these, may thy praise endure with thee? How, except thou trust in these, shall thy name not lose its might? These have had their will of thee since the Norman came to smite: Sires on grandsires, even as wave after wave along the sea, Sons on sires have followed, steadfast as clouds or hours in flight. Time alone hath power to say, time alone hath eyes to see, If your walls of rule be built but of clay-compacted sods, If your place of old shall know you no more, O Lords our Gods. III. Through the stalls wherein ye sit sounds a sentence while we wait, Set your house in order: is it not builded on the sand? Set your house in order, seeing the night is hard at hand. As the twilight of the Gods in the northern dream of fate Is this hour that comes against you, albeit this hour come late. Ye whom Time and Truth bade heed, and ye would not understand, Now an axe draws nigh the tree overshadowing all the land, And its edge of doom is set to the root of all your state. Light is more than darkness now, faith than fear and hope than hate, And what morning wills, behold, all the night shall not withstand. Rods of office, helms of rule, staffs of wise men, crowns of great, While the people willed, ye bare; now their hopes and hearts expand, Time with silent foot makes dust of your broken crowns and rods, And the lordship of your godhead is gone, O Lords our Gods.
CLEAR THE WAY! Clear the way, my lords and lackeys! you have had your day. Here you have your answer—England’s yea against your nay: Long enough your house has held you: up, and clear the way! Lust and falsehood, craft and traffic, precedent and gold, Tongue of courtier, kiss of harlot, promise bought and sold, Gave you heritage of empire over thralls of old. Now that all these things are rotten, all their gold is rust, Quenched the pride they lived by, dead the faith and cold the lust, Shall their heritage not also turn again to dust? By the grace of these they reigned, who left their sons their sway: By the grace of these, what England says her lords unsay: Till at last her cry go forth against them—Clear the way! By the grace of trust in treason knaves have lived and lied: By the force of fear and folly fools have fed their pride: By the strength of sloth and custom reason stands defied. Lest perchance your reckoning on some latter day be worse, Halt and hearken, lords of land and princes of the purse, Ere the tide be full that comes with blessing and with curse. Where we stand; as where you sit, scarce falls a sprinkling spray; But the wind that swells, the wave that follows, none shall stay: Spread no more of sail for shipwreck: out, and clear the way!
A WORD FOR THE COUNTRY. Men, born of the land that for ages Has been honoured where freedom was dear, Till your labour wax fat on its wages You shall never be peers of a peer. Where might is, the right is: Long purses make strong swords. Let weakness learn meekness: God save the House of Lords! You are free to consume in stagnation: You are equal in right to obey: You are brothers in bonds, and the nation Is your mother—whose sons are her prey. Those others your brothers, Who toil not, weave, nor till, Refuse you and use you As waiters on their will. But your fathers bowed down to their masters And obeyed them and served and adored. Shall the sheep not give thanks to their pastors? Shall the serf not give praise to his lord? Time, waning and gaining, Grown other now than then, Needs pastors and masters For sheep, and not for men. If his grandsire did service in battle, If his grandam was kissed by a king, Must men to my lord be as cattle Or as apes that he leads in a string? To deem so, to dream so, Would bid the world proclaim The dastards for bastards, Not heirs of England’s fame. Not in spite but in right of dishonour, There are actors who trample your boards Till the earth that endures you upon her Grows weary to bear you, my lords. Your token is broken, It will not pass for gold: Your glory looks hoary, Your sun in heaven turns cold. They are worthy to reign on their brothers, To contemn them as clods and as carles, Who are Graces by grace of such mothers As brightened the bed of King Charles. What manner of banner, What fame is this they flaunt, That Britain, soul-smitten, Should shrink before their vaunt? Bright sons of sublime prostitution, You are made of the mire of the street Where your grandmothers walked in pollution Till a coronet shone at their feet. Your Graces, whose faces Bear high the bastard’s brand, Seem stronger no longer Than all this honest land. But the sons of her soldiers and seamen, They are worthy forsooth of their hire. If the father won praise from all free men, Shall the sons not exult in their sire? Let money make sunny And power make proud their lives, And feed them and breed them Like drones in drowsiest hives. But if haply the name be a burden And the souls be no kindred of theirs, Should wise men rejoice in such guerdon Or brave men exult in such heirs? Or rather the father Frown, shamefaced, on the son, And no men but foemen, Deriding, cry ‘Well done’? Let the gold and the land they inherit Pass ever from hand into hand: In right of the forefather’s merit Let the gold be the son’s, and the land. Soft raiment, rich payment, High place, the state affords; Full measure of pleasure, But now no more, my lords. Is the future beleaguered with dangers If the poor be far other than slaves? Shall the sons of the land be as strangers In the land of their forefathers’ graves? Shame were it to bear it, And shame it were to see: If free men you be, men, Let proof proclaim you free. ‘But democracy means dissolution: See, laden with clamour and crime, How the darkness of dim revolution Comes deepening the twilight of time! Ah, better the fetter That holds the poor man’s hand Than peril of sterile Blind change that wastes the land. ‘Gaze forward through clouds that environ; It shall be as it was in the past. Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron, Shall a nation be moulded to last.’ So teach they, so preach they, Who dream themselves the dream That hallows the gallows And bids the scaffold stream. ‘With a hero at head, and a nation Well gagged and well drilled and well cowed, And a gospel of war and damnation, Has not empire a right to be proud? Fools prattle and tattle Of freedom, reason, right, The beauty of duty, The loveliness of light. ‘But we know, we believe it, we see it, Force only has power upon earth.’ So be it! and ever so be it For souls that are bestial by birth! Let Prussian with Russian Exchange the kiss of slaves: But sea-folk are free folk By grace of winds and waves. Has the past from the sepulchres beckoned? Let answer from Englishmen be— No man shall be lord of us reckoned Who is baser, not better, than we. No coward, empowered To soil a brave man’s name; For shame’s sake and fame’s sake, Enough of fame and shame. Fame needs not the golden addition; Shame bears it abroad as a brand. Let the deed, and no more the tradition, Speak out and be heard through the land. Pride, rootless and fruitless, No longer takes and gives: But surer and purer The soul of England lives. He is master and lord of his brothers Who is worthier and wiser than they. Him only, him surely, shall others, Else equal, observe and obey. Truth, flawless and awless, Do falsehood what it can, Makes royal the loyal And simple heart of man. Who are these, then, that England should hearken, Who rage and wax wroth and grow pale If she turn from the sunsets that darken And her ship for the morning set sail? Let strangers fear dangers: All know, that hold her dear, Dishonour upon her Can only fall through fear. Men, born of the landsmen and seamen Who served her with souls and with swords, She bids you be brothers, and free men, And lordless, and fearless of lords. She cares not, she dares not Care now for gold or steel: Light lead her, truth speed her, God save the Commonweal!
A WORD FOR THE NATION. I. A word across the water Against our ears is borne, Of threatenings and of slaughter, Of rage and spite and scorn: We have not, alack, an ally to befriend us, And the season is ripe to extirpate and end us: Let the German touch hands with the Gaul, And the fortress of England must fall; And the sea shall be swept of her seamen, And the waters they ruled be their graves, And Dutchmen and Frenchmen be free men, And Englishmen slaves. II. Our time once more is over, Once more our end is near: A bull without a drover, The Briton reels to rear, And the van of the nations is held by his betters, And the seas of the world shall be loosed from his fetters, And his glory shall pass as a breath, And the life that is in him be death; And the sepulchre sealed on his glory For a sign to the nations shall be As of Tyre and of Carthage in story, Once lords of the sea. III. The lips are wise and loyal, The hearts are brave and true, Imperial thoughts and royal Make strong the clamorous crew, Whence louder and prouder the noise of defiance Rings rage from the grave of a trustless alliance, And bids us beware and be warned, As abhorred of all nations and scorned, As a swordless and spiritless nation, A wreck on the waste of the waves. So foams the released indignation Of masterless slaves. IV. Brute throats that miss the collar, Bowed backs that ask the whip, Stretched hands that lack the dollar, And many a lie-seared lip, Forefeel and foreshow for us signs as funereal As the signs that were regal of yore and imperial; We shall pass as the princes they served, We shall reap what our fathers deserved, And the place that was England’s be taken By one that is worthier than she, And the yoke of her empire be shaken Like spray from the sea. V. French hounds, whose necks are aching Still from the chain they crave, In dog-day madness breaking The dog-leash, thus may rave: But the seas that for ages have fostered and fenced her Laugh, echoing the yell of their kennel against her And their moan if destruction draw near them And the roar of her laughter to hear them; For she knows that if Englishmen be men Their England has all that she craves; All love and all honour from free men, All hatred from slaves. VI. All love that rests upon her Like sunshine and sweet air, All light of perfect honour And praise that ends in prayer, She wins not more surely, she wears not more proudly, Than the token of tribute that clatters thus loudly, The tribute of foes when they meet That rattles and rings at her feet, The tribute of rage and of rancour, The tribute of slaves to the free, To the people whose hope hath its anchor Made fast in the sea. VII. No fool that bows the back he Feels fit for scourge or brand, No scurril scribes that lackey The lords of Lackeyland, No penman that yearns, as he turns on his pallet, For the place or the pence of a peer or a valet, No whelp of as currish a pack As the litter whose yelp it gives back, Though he answer the cry of his brother As echoes might answer from caves, Shall be witness as though for a mother Whose children were slaves. VIII. But those found fit to love her, Whose love has root in faith, Who hear, though darkness cover Time’s face, what memory saith, Who seek not the service of great men or small men But the weal that is common for comfort of all men, Those yet that in trust have beholden Truth’s dawn over England grow golden And quicken the darkness that stagnates And scatter the shadows that flee, Shall reply for her meanest as magnates And masters by sea. IX. And all shall mark her station, Her message all shall hear, When, equal-eyed, the nation Bids all her sons draw near, And freedom be more than tradition or faction, And thought be no swifter to serve her than action, And justice alone be above her, That love may be prouder to love her, And time on the crest of her story Inscribe, as remembrance engraves, The sign that subdues with its glory Kings, princes, and slaves.
A WORD FROM THE PSALMIST. Ps. xciv. 8. I. ‘Take heed, ye unwise among the people: O ye fools, when will ye understand?’ From pulpit or choir beneath the steeple, Though the words be fierce, the tones are bland. But a louder than the Church’s echo thunders In the ears of men who may not choose but hear, And the heart in him that hears it leaps and wonders, With triumphant hope astonished, or with fear For the names whose sound was power awaken Neither love nor reverence now nor dread; Their strongholds and shrines are stormed and taken, Their kingdom and all its works are dead. II. Take heed: for the tide of time is risen: It is full not yet, though now so high That spirits and hopes long pent in prison Feel round them a sense of freedom nigh, And a savour keen and sweet of brine and billow, And a murmur deep and strong of deepening strength. Though the watchman dream, with sloth or pride for pillow, And the night be long, not endless is its length. From the springs of dawn, from clouds that sever From the equal heavens and the eastward sea, The witness comes that endures for ever, Till men be brethren and thralls be free. III. But the wind of the wings of dawn expanding Strikes chill on your hearts as change and death. Ye are old, but ye have not understanding, And proud, but your pride is a dead man’s breath. And your wise men, toward whose words and signs ye hearken, And your strong men, in whose hands ye put your trust, Strain eyes to behold but clouds and dreams that darken, Stretch hands that can find but weapons red with rust. Their watchword rings, and the night rejoices, But the lark’s note laughs at the night-bird’s notes— ‘Is virtue verily found in voices? Or is wisdom won when all win votes? IV. ‘Take heed, ye unwise indeed, who listen When the wind’s wings beat and shift and change; Whose hearts are uplift, whose eyeballs glisten, With desire of new things great and strange. Let not dreams misguide nor any visions wrong you: That which has been, it is now as it was then. Is not Compromise of old a god among you? Is not Precedent indeed a king of men? But the windy hopes that lead mislead you, And the sounds ye hear are void and vain. Is a vote a coat? will franchise feed you, Or words be a roof against the rain? V. ‘Eight ages are gone since kingship entered, With knights and peers at its harnessed back, And the land, no more in its own strength centred, Was cast for a prey to the princely pack. But we pared the fangs and clipped the ravening claws of it, And good was in time brought forth of an evil thing, And the land’s high name waxed lordlier in war because of it, When chartered Right had bridled and curbed the king. And what so fair has the world beholden, And what so firm has withstood the years, As Monarchy bound in chains all golden, And Freedom guarded about with peers? VI. ‘How think ye? know not your lords and masters What collars are meet for brawling throats? Is change not mother of strange disasters? Shall plague or peril be stayed by votes? Out of precedent and privilege and order Have we plucked the flower of compromise, whose root Bears blossoms that shine from border again to border, And the mouths of many are fed with its temperate fruit. Your masters are wiser than ye, their henchmen: Your lords know surely whereof ye have need. Equality? Fools, would you fain be Frenchmen? Is equity more than a word indeed? VII. ‘Your voices, forsooth, your most sweet voices, Your worthy voices, your love, your hate, Your choice, who know not whereof your choice is, What stays are these for a stable state? Inconstancy, blind and deaf with its own fierce babble, Swells ever your throats with storm of uncertain cheers: He leans on straws who leans on a light-souled rabble; His trust is frail who puts not his trust in peers.’ So shrills the message whose word convinces Of righteousness knaves, of wisdom fools; That serfs may boast them because of princes, And the weak rejoice that the strong man rules. VIII. True friends, ye people, are these, the faction Full-mouthed that flatters and snails and bays, That fawns and foams with alternate action, And mocks the names that it soils with praise. As from fraud and force their power had fast beginning, So by righteousness and peace it may not stand, But by craft of state and nets of secret spinning, Words that weave and unweave wiles like ropes of sand Form, custom, and gold, and laws grown hoary, And strong tradition that guards the gate: To these, O people, to these give glory, That your name among nations may be great. IX. How long—for haply not now much longer— Shall fear put faith in a faithless creed, And shapes and shadows of truths be stronger In strong men’s eyes than the truth indeed? If freedom be not a word that dies when spoken, If justice be not a dream whence men must wake, How shall not the bonds of the thraldom of old be broken, And right put might in the hands of them that break? For clear as a tocsin from the steeple Is the cry gone forth along the land, Take heed, ye unwise among the people: O ye fools, when will ye understand?