Chapter 2

SON, sorrow and wisdom he taught me, and sore I grieved and learned As we twain grew into one; and the heart within me burned With the very hopes of his heart. Ah, son, it is piteous, But never again in my life shall I dare to speak to thee thus; So may these lonely words about thee creep and cling, These words of the lonely night in the days of our wayfaring. Many a child of woman to-night is born in the town, The desert of folly and wrong; and of what and whence are they grown? Many and many an one of wont and use is born; For a husband is taken to bed as a hat or a ribbon is worn. Prudence begets her thousands: “Good is a housekeeper’s life, So shall I sell my body that I may be matron and wife.” “And I shall endure foul wedlock and bear the children of need.” Some are there born of hate—many the children of greed. “I, I too can be wedded, though thou my love hast got.” “I am fair and hard of heart, and riches shall be my lot.” And all these are the good and the happy, on whom the world dawns fair. O son, when wilt thou learn of those that are born of despair, As the fabled mud of the Nile that quickens under the sun With a growth of creeping things, half dead when just begun? E’en such is the care of Nature that man should never die, Though she breed of the fools of the earth, and the dregs of the city sty. But thou, O son, O son, of very love wert born, When our hope fulfilled bred hope, and fear was a folly outworn; On the eve of the toil and the battle all sorrow and grief we weighed, We hoped and we were not ashamed, we knew and we were not afraid.

Now waneth the night and the moon—ah, son, it is piteous That never again in my life shall I dare to speak to thee thus. But sure from the wise and the simple shall the mighty come to birth; And fair were my fate, beloved, if I be yet on the earth When the world is awaken at last, and from mouth to mouth they tell Of thy love and thy deeds and thy valour, and thy hope that nought can quell.

V NEW BIRTH

IT was twenty-five years ago that I lay in my mother’s lap New born to life, nor knowing one whit of all that should hap: That day was I won from nothing to the world of struggle and pain, Twenty-five years ago—and to-night am I born again.

I look and behold the days of the years that are passed away, And my soul is full of their wealth, for oft were they blithe and gay As the hours of bird and of beast: they have made me calm and strong To wade the stream of confusion, the river of grief and wrong.

A rich man was my father, but he skulked ere I was born, And gave my mother money, but left her life to scorn; And we dwelt alone in our village: I knew not my mother’s “shame,” But her love and her wisdom I knew till death and the parting came. Then a lawyer paid me money, and I lived awhile at a school, And learned the lore of the ancients, and how the knave and the fool Have been mostly the masters of earth: yet the earth seemed fair and good With the wealth of field and homestead, and garden and river and wood; And I was glad amidst it, and little of evil I knew As I did in sport and pastime such deeds as a youth might do, Who deems he shall live for ever. Till at last it befel on a day That I came across our Frenchman at the edge of the new-mown hay, A-fishing as he was wont, alone as he always was; So I helped the dark old man to bring a chub to grass, And somehow he knew of my birth, and somehow we came to be friends, Till he got to telling me chapters of the tale that never ends; The battle of grief and hope with riches and folly and wrong. He told how the weak conspire, he told of the fear of the strong; He told of dreams grown deeds, deeds done ere time was ripe, Of hope that melted in air like the smoke of his evening pipe; Of the fight long after hope in the teeth of all despair; Of battle and prison and death, of life stripped naked and bare. But to me it all seemed happy, for I gilded all with the gold Of youth that believes not in death, nor knoweth of hope grown cold. I hearkened and learned, and longed with a longing that had no name, Till I went my ways to our village and again departure came.

Wide now the world was grown, and I saw things clear and grim, That awhile agone smiled on me from the dream-mist doubtful and dim. I knew that the poor were poor, and had no heart or hope; And I knew that I was nothing with the least of evils to cope; So I thought the thoughts of a man, and I fell into bitter mood, Wherein, except as a picture, there was nought on the earth that was good; Till I met the woman I love, and she asked, as folk ask of the wise, Of the root and meaning of things that she saw in the world of lies. I told her all I knew, and the tale told lifted the load That made me less than a man; and she set my feet on the road.

So we left our pleasure behind to seek for hope and for life, And to London we came, if perchance there smouldered the embers of strife Such as our Frenchman had told of; and I wrote to him to ask If he would be our master, and set the learners their task. But “dead” was the word on the letter when it came back to me, And all that we saw henceforward with our own eyes must we see. So we looked and wondered and sickened; not for ourselves indeed: My father by now had died, but he left enough for my need; And besides, away in our village the joiner’s craft had I learned, And I worked as other men work, and money and wisdom I earned. Yet little from day to day in street or workshop I met To nourish the plant of hope that deep in my heart had been set. The life of the poor we learned, and to me there was nothing new In their day of little deeds that ever deathward drew. But new was the horror of London that went on all the while That rich men played at their ease for name and fame to beguile The days of their empty lives, and praised the deeds they did, As though they had fashioned the earth and found out the sun long hid; Though some of them busied themselves from hopeless day to day With the lives of the slaves of the rich and the hell wherein they lay. They wrought meseems as those who should make a bargain with hell, That it grow a little cooler, and thus for ever to dwell.

So passed the world on its ways, and weary with waiting we were. Men ate and drank and married; no wild cry smote the air, No great crowd ran together to greet the day of doom; And ever more and more seemed the town like a monstrous tomb To us, the Pilgrims of Hope, until to-night it came, And Hope on the stones of the street is written in letters of flame.

This is how it befel: a workmate of mine had heard Some bitter speech in my mouth, and he took me up at the word, And said: “Come over to-morrow to our Radical spouting-place; For there, if we hear nothing new, at least we shall see a new face; He is one of those Communist chaps, and ’tis like that you two may agree.” So we went, and the street was as dull and as common as aught you could see; Dull and dirty the room. Just over the chairman’s chair Was a bust, a Quaker’s face with nose cocked up in the air; There were common prints on the wall of the heads of the party fray, And Mazzini dark and lean amidst them gone astray. Some thirty men we were of the kind that I knew full well, Listless, rubbed down to the type of our easy-going hell. My heart sank down as I entered, and wearily there I sat While the chairman strove to end his maunder of this and of that. And partly shy he seemed, and partly indeed ashamed Of the grizzled man beside him as his name to us he named. He rose, thickset and short, and dressed in shabby blue, And even as he began it seemed as though I knew The thing he was going to say, though I never heard it before. He spoke, were it well, were it ill, as though a message he bore, A word that he could not refrain from many a million of men. Nor aught seemed the sordid room and the few that were listening then Save the hall of the labouring earth and the world which was to be. Bitter to many the message, but sweet indeed unto me, Of man without a master, and earth without a strife, And every soul rejoicing in the sweet and bitter of life: Of peace and good-will he told, and I knew that in faith he spake, But his words were my very thoughts, and I saw the battle awake, And I followed from end to end; and triumph grew in my heart As he called on each that heard him to arise and play his part In the tale of the new-told gospel, lest as slaves they should live and die.

He ceased, and I thought the hearers would rise up with one cry, And bid him straight enrol them; but they, they applauded indeed, For the man was grown full eager, and had made them hearken and heed: But they sat and made no sign, and two of the glibber kind Stood up to jeer and to carp his fiery words to blind. I did not listen to them, but failed not his voice to hear When he rose to answer the carpers, striving to make more clear That which was clear already; not overwell, I knew, He answered the sneers and the silence, so hot and eager he grew; But my hope full well he answered, and when he called again On men to band together lest they live and die in vain, In fear lest he should escape me, I rose ere the meeting was done, And gave him my name and my faith—and I was the only one. He smiled as he heard the jeers, and there was a shake of the hand, He spoke like a friend long known; and lo! I was one of the band.

And now the streets seem gay and the high stars glittering bright; And for me, I sing amongst them, for my heart is full and light. I see the deeds to be done and the day to come on the earth, And riches vanished away and sorrow turned to mirth; I see the city squalor and the country stupor gone. And we a part of it all—we twain no longer alone In the days to come of the pleasure, in the days that are of the fight— I was born once long ago: I am born again to-night.

VI THE NEW PROLETARIAN

HOW near to the goal are we now, and what shall we live to behold? Will it come a day of surprise to the best of the hopeful and bold? Shall the sun arise some morning and see men falling to work, Smiling and loving their lives, not fearing the ill that may lurk In every house on their road, in the very ground that they tread? Shall the sun see famine slain, and the fear of children dead? Shall he look adown on men set free from the burden of care, And the earth grown like to himself, so comely, clean and fair? Or else will it linger and loiter, till hope deferred hath spoiled All bloom of the life of man—yea, the day for which we have toiled? Till our hearts be turned to stone by the griefs that we have borne, And our loving kindness seared by love from our anguish torn. Till our hope grow a wrathful fire, and the light of the second birth Be a flame to burn up the weeds from the lean impoverished earth.

What’s this? Meseems it was but a little while ago When the merest sparkle of hope set all my heart aglow! The hope of the day was enough; but now ’tis the very day That wearies my hope with longing. What’s changed or gone away? Or what is it drags at my heart-strings?—is it aught save the coward’s fear? In this little room where I sit is all that I hold most dear— My love, and the love we have fashioned, my wife and the little lad. Yet the four walls look upon us with other eyes than they had, For indeed a thing hath happened. Last week at my craft I worked, Lest oft in the grey of the morning my heart should tell me I shirked; But to-day I work for us three, lest he and she and I In the mud of the street should draggle till we come to the workhouse or die.

Not long to tell is the story, for, as I told you before, A lawyer paid me the money which came from my father’s store. Well, now the lawyer is dead, and a curious tangle of theft, It seems, is what he has lived by, and none of my money is left. So I who have worked for my pleasure now work for utter need: In “the noble army of labour” I now am a soldier indeed.

“You are young, you belong to the class that you love,” saith the rich man’s sneer; “Work on with your class and be thankful.” All that I hearken to hear, Nor heed the laughter much; have patience a little while, I will tell you what’s in my heart, nor hide a jot by guile. When I worked pretty much for my pleasure I really worked with a will, It was well and workmanlike done, and my fellows knew my skill, And deemed me one of themselves though they called me gentleman Dick, Since they knew I had some money; but now that to work I must stick, Or fall into utter ruin, there’s something gone, I find; The work goes, cleared is the job, but there’s something left behind; I take up fear with my chisel, fear lies ’twixt me and my plane, And I wake in the merry morning to a new unwonted pain. That’s fear: I shall live it down—and many a thing besides Till I win the poor dulled heart which the workman’s jacket hides. Were it not for the Hope of Hopes I know my journey’s end, And would wish I had ne’er been born the weary way to wend.

Now further, well you may think we have lived no gentleman’s life, My wife is my servant, and I am the servant of my wife, And we make no work for each other; but country folk we were, And she sickened sore for the grass and the breath of the fragrant air That had made her lovely and strong; and so up here we came To the northern slopes of the town to live with a country dame, Who can talk of the field-folks’ ways: not one of the newest the house, The woodwork worn to the bone, its panels the land of the mouse, Its windows rattling and loose, its floors all up and down; But this at least it was, just a cottage left in the town. There might you sit in our parlour in the Sunday afternoon And watch the sun through the vine-leaves and fall to dreaming that soon You would see the grey team passing, their fetlocks wet with the brook, Or the shining mountainous straw-load: there the summer moon would look Through the leaves on the lampless room, wherein we sat we twain, All London vanished away; and the morn of the summer rain Would waft us the scent of the hay; or the first faint yellow leaves Would flutter adown before us and tell of the acres of sheaves.

All this hath our lawyer eaten, and to-morrow must we go To a room near my master’s shop, in the purlieus of Soho. No words of its shabby meanness! But that is our prison-cell In the jail of weary London. Therein for us must dwell The hope of the world that shall be, that rose a glimmering spark As the last thin flame of our pleasure sank quavering in the dark.

Again the rich man jeereth: “The man is a coward, or worse— He bewails his feeble pleasure; he quails before the curse Which many a man endureth with calm and smiling face.” Nay, the man is a man, by your leave! Or put yourself in his place, And see if the tale reads better. The haven of rest destroyed, And nothing left of the life that was once so well enjoyed But leave to live and labour, and the glimmer of hope deferred. Now know I the cry of the poor no more as a story heard, But rather a wordless wail forced forth from the weary heart. Now, now when hope ariseth I shall surely know my part.

* * * * *

THERE’S a little more to tell. When those last words were said, At least I was yet a-working, and earning daily bread. But now all that is changed, and meseems adown the stair That leads to the nethermost pit, man, wife and child must fare.

When I joined the Communist folk, I did what in me lay To learn the grounds of their faith. I read day after day Whatever books I could handle, and heard about and about What talk was going amongst them; and I burned up doubt after doubt, Until it befel at last that to others I needs must speak (Indeed, they pressed me to that while yet I was weaker than weak). So I began the business, and in street-corners I spake To knots of men. Indeed, that made my very heart ache, So hopeless it seemed; for some stood by like men of wood; And some, though fain to listen, but a few words understood; And some but hooted and jeered: but whiles across some I came Who were keen and eager to hear; as in dry flax the flame So the quick thought flickered amongst them: and that indeed was a feast. So about the streets I went, and the work on my hands increased; And to say the very truth betwixt the smooth and the rough It was work and hope went with it, and I liked it well enough: Nor made I any secret of all that I was at But daily talked in our shop and spoke of this and of that.

Then vanished my money away, and like a fool I told Some one or two of the loss. Did that make the master bold? Before I was one of his lot, and as queer as my head might be I might do pretty much as I liked. Well now he sent for me And spoke out in very words my thought of the rich man’s jeer: “Well, sir, you have got your wish, as far as I can hear, And are now no thief of labour, but an honest working man: Now I’ll give you a word of warning: stay in it as long as you can, This working lot that you like so: you’re pretty well off as you are. So take another warning: I have thought you went too far, And now I am quite sure of it; so make an end of your talk At once and for ever henceforth, or out of my shop you walk; There are plenty of men to be had who are quite as good as you. And mind you, anywhere else you’ll scarce get work to do, Unless you rule your tongue;—good morning; stick to your work.”

The hot blood rose to my eyes, somewhere a thought did lurk To finish both him and the job: but I knew now what I was, And out of the little office in helpless rage did I pass And went to my work, a _slave_, for the sake of my child and my sweet. Did men look for the brand on my forehead that eve as I went through the street? And what was the end after all? Why, one of my shopmates heard My next night’s speech in the street, and passed on some bitter word, And that week came a word with my money: “You needn’t come again.” And the shame of my four days’ silence had been but grief in vain.

Well I see the days before me: this time we shall not die Nor go to the workhouse at once: I shall get work by-and-by, And shall work in fear at first, and at last forget my fear, And drudge on from day to day, since it seems that I hold life dear. ’Tis the lot of many millions! Yet if half of those millions knew The hope that my heart hath learned, we should find a deed to do, And who or what should withstand us? And I, e’en I might live To know the love of my fellows and the gifts that earth can give.

VII IN PRISON—AND AT HOME

THE first of the nights is this, and I cannot go to bed; I long for the dawning sorely, although when the night shall be dead, Scarce to me shall the day be alive. Twice twenty-eight nights more, Twice twenty-eight long days till the evil dream be o’er! And he, does he count the hours as he lies in his prison-cell? Does he nurse and cherish his pain? Nay, I know his strong heart well, Swift shall his soul fare forth; he is here, and bears me away, Till hand in hand we depart toward the hope of the earlier day. Yea, here or there he sees it: in the street, in the cell, he sees The vision he made me behold mid the stems of the blossoming trees, When spring lay light on the earth, and first and at last I knew How sweet was his clinging hand, how fair were the deeds he would do.

Nay, how wilt thou weep and be soft and cherish a pleasure in pain, When the days and their task are before thee and awhile thou must work for twain? O face, thou shalt lose yet more of thy fairness, be thinner no doubt, And be waxen white and worn by the day that he cometh out! Hand, how pale thou shalt be! how changed from the sunburnt hand That he kissed as it handled the rake in the noon of the summer land!

Let me think then it is but a trifle: the neighbours have told me so; “Two months! why that is nothing and the time will speedily go.” ’Tis nothing—O empty bed, let me work then for his sake! I will copy out the paper which he thought the News might take, If my eyes may see the letters; ’tis a picture of our life And the little deeds of our days ere we thought of prison and strife.

Yes, neighbour, yes I am early—and I was late last night; Bedless I wore through the hours and made a shift to write. It was kind of you to come, nor will it grieve me at all To tell you why he’s in prison and how the thing did befal; For I know you are with us at heart, and belike will join us soon. It was thus: we went to a meeting on Saturday afternoon, At a new place down in the West, a wretched quarter enough, Where the rich men’s houses are elbowed by ragged streets and rough, Which are worse than they seem to be. (Poor thing! you know too well How pass the days and the nights within that bricken hell!) There, then, on a bit of waste we stood ’twixt the rich and the poor; And Jack was the first to speak; that was he that you met at the door Last week. It was quiet at first; and dull they most of them stood As though they heeded nothing, nor thought of bad or of good, Not even that they were poor, and haggard and dirty and dull: Nay, some were so rich indeed that they with liquor were full, And dull wrath rose in their souls as the hot words went by their ears, For they deemed they were mocked and rated by men that were more than their peers. But for some, they seemed to think that a prelude was all this To the preachment of saving of souls, and hell, and endless bliss; While some (O the hearts of slaves!) although they might understand, When they heard their masters and feeders called thieves of wealth and of land, Were as angry as though _they_ were cursed. Withal there were some that heard, And stood and pondered it all, and garnered a hope and a word. Ah! heavy my heart was grown as I gazed on the terrible throng. Lo! these that should have been the glad and the deft and the strong, How were they dull and abased as the very filth of the road! And who should waken their souls or clear their hearts of the load?