Poems

Lord Lilac thought it rather rotten That Shakespeare should be quite And therefore got on a Committee With several chaps out of the city. And Shorter and Sir Herbert Tree, Lord Rothschild and Lord Rosebery And F.C.G. and Comyns Carr, Two dukes and a dramatic star, Also a clergyman now dead; And while the vain world careless sped Unheeding the heroic name— The souls most fed with Shakespeare's flame Still sat unconquered in a ring, Remembering him like anything.

Lord Lilac did not long remain. Lord Lilac did not come again. He softly lit a cigarette And sought some other social set Where, in some other knots or rings, People were doing cultured things, —Miss Zwilt's Humane Vivarium —The little men that paint on gum —The exquisite Gorilla Girl.... He sometimes, in this giddy whirl (Not being really bad at heart), Remembered Shakespeare with a start— But not with that grand constancy Of Clement Shorter, Herbert Tree, Lord Rosebery and Comyns Carr And all the other names there are; Who stuck like limpets to the spot, Lest they forgot, lest they forgot.

Lord Lilac was of slighter stuff; Lord Lilac had had quite enough.

Jones had a dog; it had a chain; Not often worn, not causing pain; But, as the I.K.L. had passed Their "Unleashed Cousins Act" at last, Inspectors took the chain away; Whereat the canine barked "hurray"! At which, of course, the S.P.U. (Whose Nervous Motorists' Bill was through), Were forced to give the dog in charge For being Audibly at Large. None, you will say, were now annoyed, Save haply Jones—the yard was void. But something being in the lease About "alarms to aid police," The U.S.U. annexed the yard For having no sufficient guards Now if there's one condition The C.C.P. are strong upon It is that every house one buys Must have a yard for exercise; So Jones, as tenant, was unfit. His state of health was proof of it. Two doctors of the T.T.U.'s Told him his legs from long disuse, Were atrophied; and saying "So From step to higher step we go Till everything is New and True," They cut his legs off and withdrew. You know the E.T.S.T.'s views Are stronger than the T.T.U.'s: And soon (as one may say) took wing The Arms, though not the Man, I sing. To see him sitting limbless there Was more than the K.K. could bear "In mercy silence with all speed That mouth there are no hands to feed; What cruel sentimentalist, O Jones, would doom thee to exist— Clinging to selfish Selfhood yet? Weak one! Such reasoning might upset The Pump Act, and the accumulation Of all constructive legislation; Let us construct you up a bit—" The head fell off when it was hit: Then words did rise and honest doubt, And four Commissions sat about Whether the slash that left him dead Cut off his body or his head.

An author in the Isle of Wight Observed with unconcealed delight A land of old and just renown Where Freedom slowly broadened down From Precedent to Precedent.... And this, I think, was what he meant.

John Grubby, who was short and stout And troubled with religious doubt, Refused about the age of three To sit upon the curate's knee; (For so the eternal strife must rage Between the spirit of the age And Dogma, which, as is well known. Does simply hate to be outgrown). Grubby, the young idea that shoots, Outgrew the ages like old boots; While still, to all appearance, small, Would have no Miracles at all; And just before the age of ten Firmly refused Free Will to men. The altars reeled, the hen-ens shook, Just as he read of in the book; Flung from his house went forth the youth Alone with tempests and the Truth, Up to the distant city and dim Where his papa had bought for him A partnership in Chepe and Deer Worth, say, twelve hundred pounds a year. But he was resolute. Lord Brute Had found him useful; and Lord Loot, With whom few other men would act, Valued his promptitude and tact; Never did even philanthropy Enrich a man more rapidly: Twas he that stopped the Strike in Coal, For hungry children racked his soul; To end their misery there and then He filled the mines with Chinamen— Sat in that House that broke the Kings, And voted for all sores of things— And rose from Under-Sec. to Sec. Some grumbled. Growlers who gave less Than generous worship to success, The little printers in Dundee Who got ten years for blasphemy, (Although he let them off with seven) Respect him rather less than heaven. No matter. This can still be said: Never to supernatural dread, Never to unseen deity, Did Sir John Grubby bend the knee; Never did dream of hell or wrath Turn Viscount Grubby from his path; Nor was he bribed by fabled bliss To kneel to any world but this. The curate lives in Camden Town, His lap still empty of renown, And still across the waste of years John Grubby, in the House of Peers, Faces that curate, proud and free, And never sits upon his knee.

NICE, JANUARY 30, 1914.

If any in an island cradle curled Of comfort, may make offerings to you, Who in the day of all denial blew A bugle through the blackness of the world,

An English hand would touch your shroud, in trust That truth again be told in English speech. And we too yet may practise what we preach, Though it were practising the bayonet thrust.

Cutting that giant neck from sand to sand, From sea to sea; it was a little thing Beside your sudden shout and sabre-swing That cut the throat of thieves in every land.

Heed not if half-wits mock your broken blade: Mammon our master doeth all things ill. You are the Fool that charged a windmill. Still, The Miller is a Knave; and was afraid.

Lay down your sword. Ruin will know her own. Let each small statesman sow his weak wild oat, Or turn his coat to decorate his coat, Or take the throne and perish by the throne.

Lay down your sword. And let the White Flag fade To grey; and let the Red Flag fade to pink, For these that climb and climb; and cannot sink So deep as death and honour, Déroulède.

TO A POPULAR LEADER MUCH TO BE CONGRATULATED ON THE AVOIDANCE OF A STRIKE AT CHRISTMAS.

I know you. You will hail the huge release, Saying the sheathing of a thousand swords, In silence and injustice, well accords With Christmas bells. And you will gild with grease The papers, the employers, the police, And vomit up the void your windy words To your New Christ; who bears no whip of cords For them that traffic in the doves of peace.

The feast of friends, the candle-fruited tree, I have not failed to honour. And I say It would be better for such men as we, And we be nearer Bethlehem, it we lay Shot dead on scarlet snows for liberty, Dead in the daylight upon Christmas Day.

"A DROVE OF CATTLE CAME INTO A VILLAGE CALLED SWORDS, AND WAS STOPPED BY THE RIOTERS."—Daily Paper.

In the place called Swords on the Irish road It is told for a new renown How we field the horns of the cattle, and how We will hold the horns of the devil now Ere the lord of bell, with the horn on his brow, Is crowned in Dublin town

Light in the East and light in the West, And light on the cruel lords, On the souls that suddenly all men knew, And the green flag flew and the red flag flew, And many a wheel of the world stopped, too, When the cattle were stopped at Swords.

Be they sinners or less than saints That smite in the street for rage, We know where the shame shines bright; we know You that they smite at, you their foe, Lords of the lawless wage and low. This is your lawful wage.

You pinched a child to a torture price That you dared not name in words; So black a jest was the silver bit That your own speech shook for the shame of And the coward was plain as a cow they hit When the cattle have strayed at Swords.

The wheel of the torment of wives went round To break men's brotherhood; You gave the good Irish blood to grease The clubs of your country's enemies; You saw the brave man beat to the knees: And you saw that it was good.

The rope of the rich is long and long— The longest of hangmen's cords; But the kings and crowds are holding their bream, In a giant shadow o'er all beneath Where God stands holding the scales of Death Between the cattle and Swords.

Haply the lords that hire and lend, The lowest of all men's lords, Who sell their kind like kine at a fair. Will find no head of their cattle there; But faces of men where cattle were: Faces of men—and Swords.

And the name shining and terrible, The sternest of all man's words, Still mark that place to seek or shun, In the streets where the struggling cattle run— Grass and a silence of judgment done In the place that is called Swords.

The line breaks and the guns go under, The lords and the lackeys ride the plain; I draw deep breaths of the dawn and thunder, And the whole of my heart grows young again. For our Chiefs said "Done," and I did not deem it; Our Seers said "Peace," and it was not peace; Earth will grow worse till men redeem it, And wars more evil, ere all wars cease. But the old flags reel and the old drums rattle. As once in my life they throbbed and reeled; I have found ray youth in the lost battle, I have found my heart on the battlefield. For we that fight till the world is free, We are not easy in victory: We have known each other too long, my brother, And fought each other, the world and we.

And I dream of the days when work was scrappy, And rare in our pockets the mark of the mint, When we were angry and poor and happy, And proud of seeing our names in print. For so they conquered and so we scattered, When the Devil rode and his dogs smelt gold, And the peace of a harmless folk was shattered; When I was twenty and odd years old. When the mongrel men that the market classes Had slimy hands upon England's rod, And sword in hand upon Afric's passes Her last Republic cried to God. For the men no lords can buy or sell, They sit not easy when all goes well. They have said to each other what naught can smother, They have seen each other, our souls and hell.

It is all as of old; the empty clangour. The Nothing scrawled on a five-foot page, The huckster who, mocking holy anger, Painfully paints his face with rage. And the faith of the poor is faint and partial, And the pride of the rich is all for sale, And the chosen heralds of England's Marshal Are the sandwich-men of the "Daily Mail." And the niggards that dare not give are glutted, And the feeble that dare not fail are strong, So while the City of Toil is gutted, I sit in the saddle and sing my song. For we that fight till the world is free, We have no comfort in victory; We have read each other as Cain his brother, We know each other, these slaves and we.

ON HEARING A LANDLORD ACCUSED (FALSELY, FOR ALL THE BARD CAN SAY) OF NEGLECTING ONE OF THE NUMEROUS WHITE HORSES THAT WERE OR WERE NOT CONNECTED WITH ALFRED THE GREAT

If you have picked your lawn of leaves and snails, If you have told your valet, even with oaths, Once a week or so, to brush your clothes. If you have dared to clean your teeth, or nails, While the Horse upon the holy mountain fails— Then God that Alfred to his earth betrothes Send on you screaming all that honour loathes, Horsewhipping, Hounsditch, debts, and Daily Mails.

Can you not even conserve? For if indeed The White Horse fades; then closer creeps the fight When we shall scour the face of England white, Plucking such men as you up like a weed, And fling them far beyond a shaft shot right When Wessex went to battle for the creed.

A sleepy people, without priests or kings, Dreamed here, men say, to drive us to the sea: O let us drive ourselves! For it is free And smells of honour and of English things. How came we brawling by these bitter springs, We of the North?—two kindly nations—we? Though the dice rattles and the clear coin rings, Here is no place for living men to be. Leave them the gold that worked and whined for it, Let them that have no nation anywhere Be native here, and fat and full of bread; But we, whose sins were human, we will quit The land of blood, and leave these vultures there, Noiselessly happy, feeding on the dead.

We never saw you, like our sires, For whom your face was Freedom's face, Nor know what office-tapes and wires With such strong cords may interlace; We know not if the statesmen then Were fashioned as the sort we see, We know that not under your ken Did England laugh at Liberty.

Yea, this one thing is known of you, We know that not till you were dumb, Not till your course was thundered through, Did Mammon see his kingdom come. The songs of theft, the swords of hire, The clerks that raved, the troops that ran The empire of the world's desire, The dance of all the dirt began.

The happy jewelled alien men Worked then but as a little leaven; From some more modest palace then The Soul of Dives stank to Heaven. But when they planned with lisp and leer Their careful war upon the weak, They smote your body on its bier, For surety that you could not speak.

A hero in the desert died; Men cried that saints should bury him. And round the grave should guard and ride, A chivalry of Cherubim. God said: "There is a better place, A nobler trophy and more tall; The beasts that fled before his face Shall come to make his funeral.

"The mighty vermin of the void That hid them from his bended bow, Shall crawl from caverns overjoyed, Jackal and snake and carrion crow. And perched above the vulture's eggs, Reversed upon its hideous head, A blue-faced ape shall wave its legs To tell the world that he is dead."