Chapter 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.