Oft in the pleasant summer years,
Reading the tales of days bygone,
I have mused on the story of human tears,
All that man unto man has done,
Massacre, torture, and black despair;
Reading it all in my easy-chair.
Passionate prayer for a minute’s life;
Tortured crying for death as rest;
Husband pleading for child or wife,
Pitiless stroke upon tender breast.
Was it all real as that I lay there
Lazily stretched on my easy-chair?
Could I believe in those hard old times,
Here in this safe luxurious age?
Were the horrors invented to season rhymes,
Or truly is man so fierce in his rage?
What could I suffer, and what could I dare?
I who was bred to that easy-chair.
They were my fathers, the men of yore,
Little they recked of a cruel death;
They would dip their hands in a heretic’s gore,
They stood and burnt for a rule of faith.
What would I burn for, and whom not spare?
I, who had faith in an easy-chair.
Now do I see old tales are true,
Here in the clutch of a savage foe;
Now shall I know what my fathers knew,
Bodily anguish and bitter woe,
Naked and bound in the strong sun’s glare,
Far from my civilised easy-chair.
Now have I tasted and understood
The old-world feeling of mortal hate;
For the eyes all round us are hot with blood;
They will kill us coolly—they do but wait;
While I, I would sell ten lives, at least,
For one fair stroke at that devilish priest,
Just in return for the kick he gave,
Bidding me call on the prophet’s name;
Even a dog by this may save
Skin from the knife and soul from the flame;
My soul! if he can let the prophet burn it,
But life is sweet if a word may earn it.
A bullock’s death, and at thirty years!
Just one phrase, and a man gets off it;
Look at that mongrel clerk in his tears
Whining aloud the name of the prophet;
Only a formula easy to patter,
And, God Almighty, what can it matter?
‘Matter enough,’ will my comrade say
Praying aloud here close at my side,
‘Whether you mourn in despair alway,
Cursed for ever by Christ denied;
Or whether you suffer a minute’s pain
All the reward of Heaven to gain.’