PEASANT AND KING

What the Peasants of Europe Are Thinking

You who put faith in your banks and brigades,
Drank and ate largely, slept easy at night,
Hoarded your lyddite and polished the blades,
Let down upon us this blistering blight—
You who played grandly the easiest game,
Now can you shoulder the weight of the same?
Say, can you fight?
Here is the tragedy: losing or winning
Who profits a copper? Who garners the fruit?
From bloodiest ending to futile beginning
Ours is the blood, and the sorrow to boot.
Muster your music, flutter your flags,
Ours are the hunger, the wounds, and the rags.
Say, can you shoot?
Down in the muck and despair of the trenches
Comes not the moment of bitterest need;
Over the sweat and the groans and the stenches
There is a joy in the valorous deed—
But, lying wounded, what one forgets
You and your ribbons and d——d epaulettes—
Say, do you bleed?
This is your game: it was none of our choosing—
We are the pawns with whom you have played.
Yours is the winning and ours is the losing,
But, when the penalties have to be paid,
We who are left, and our womenfolk, too,
Rulers of Europe, will settle with you—
You, and your trade.
October, 1914.

TILL TWISTON WENT

Till Twiston went, the war still seemed
A far-off thing: a nightmare dreamed,
Some bruit or fable half-believed,
Too hideous to be conceived.
His letter came: the memories throng
Of days that made the friendship strong—
The oar he won, the ties he wore,
His love of china, fairy lore,
(And flappers); and his honest eyes;
His stammer, his absurdities;
His marmalade, his bitter beer,
And all that made him quaint and dear.
And though we muckle have to do
Yet love must needs come breaking through,
And now and then the office hum
Dies like a mist, ... and there will come
An Oxford breakfast scene: the quad
All blue and grey outside—O God—
And there sits Twiston at the feast
Proclaiming he will be a priest!
I see his eyes, his homely neb—
Ring, telephones, and cut the web!
And when it's over, will there be
In his grey house above the Dee
A mug to drain? Will we renew
The dreams of all we hoped to do?
Our Cotswold tramps? And will there still
Be flappers in the surf at Rhyl?
O how I counted on the hour
When he would see the Woolworth Tower,
And how we set our hearts upon
The steep grey walls of Carcassonne!

TO RUDYARD KIPLING

For His Fiftieth Birthday
(December 30, 1915)