They’re the life-pittance Competition leaves,
The least for which brother’ll slay brother.
He who the fruits of this hell-strife receives,
He is a thief, an assassin, and none other!
It is a lie—just that, a lie—to declare
That Rent’s the interest on just gains.
Rent’s the thumb-screw that makes the worker share
With him who worked not the produce of his pains.
Rent’s the wise tax the human tape-worm knows.
The fat he takes; the life-lean leaves.
The holy Landlord is, as we suppose,
Just this—the model of assassin-thieves!
What is the trick the rich-man, then, contrives?
How play my lords their brilliant rôles?—
They live on the plunder of our toiling lives,
The degradation of our bodies and souls!
TO THE SONS OF LABOUR.
Grave this deep in your hearts,
Forget not the tale of the past!
Never, never believe
That any will help you, or can,
Saving only yourselves!
What have the gentlemen done,
Peerless haters of wrong,
Byrons and Shelleys, what?
They stand great famous names,
Demi-gods to their own,
Shadows far off, alien
To us and ours for ever.
Those who love them and hate
The crime, the injustice they hated,
What can they do but shout,
Win a name from our woes,
And leave us just as we were?
No, but resolutely turned,
Our wants, our desires made clear,
And clear the means that shall win them,
Drill and drill and drill!
Then when the day is come,
When the royal battle-flag’s up,
When blood has been spilled in vain
In timid half-hearted war,
Then let the Cromwell rise,
The simple, the true-souled man;
Then let Grant come forth,
The calm, the determined comrade,
But deep in their hearts one hate,
Deep in their souls one thought,
To bring the iniquity low,
To make the People free!
Ah, for such as these
We with the same heart-hate,
We with the same soul-thought,
Will fall to our destined places
In the ranks of the great New Model, [49]
In the Army that sees ahead
Marston, Naseby, Whitehall,
The Wilderness, Petersburg,—yes,
But beyond the blood and the smoke,
Beyond the struggle and death,
The Union victorious safe,
The Commonwealth glorious free!
TO THE ARTISTS.
You tell me these great lords have raised up Art:
I say they have degraded it. Look you,
When ever did they let the poet sing,
The painter paint, the sculptor hew and cast,
The music raise her heavenly voice, except
To praise them and their wretched rule o’er men?
Behold our English poets that were poor
Since these great lords were rich and held the state:
Behold the glories of the German land,
Poets, musicians, driven, like them, to death
Unless they’d tune their spirits’ harps to play
Drawing-room pieces for the chattering fools
Who aped the taste for Art or for a leer.
Go to, no Art was ever noble yet,
Noble and high, the speech of godlike men,
When fetters bound it, be they gold or flowers.
All that is noblest, highest, greatest, best,
Comes from the Galilean peasant’s hut, comes from
The Stratford village, the Ayrshire plough, the shop
That gave us Chaucer, the humble Milton’s trade—
Bach’s, Mozart’s, great Beethoven’s,—And these are they
Who knew the People, being what they knew!
Go to, if in the future years no strain,
No picture of earth’s glory like to what
Your Artists raised for that small clique or this
Of supercilious imbecilities—
O if no better demi-gods of Art
Can rise save those whose barbarous tinsel yet
Makes hideous all the beauty of old homes—
Then let us seek the comforts of despair
In democratic efforts dead and gone:
Weep with Pheideian Athens, sigh an hour
With Raffaelle’s Florence, beat the head and breast
O’er Shakspere’s England that from Milton’s took
In lips the name that leaped from lead and flame
From out her heart against the Spanish guns!