Chapter 4

IT was strange indeed, that journey! Never yet had I crossed the sea Or looked on another people than the folk that had fostered me, And my heart rose up and fluttered as in the misty night We came on the fleet of the fishers slow rolling in the light Of the hidden moon, as the sea dim under the false dawn lay; And so like shadows of ships through the night they faded away, And Calais pier was upon us. Dreamlike it was indeed As we sat in the train together, and toward the end made speed. But a dull sleep came upon me, and through the sleep a dream Of the Frenchman who once was my master by the side of the willowy stream; And he talked and told me tales of the war unwaged as yet, And the victory never won, and bade me never forget, While I walked on, still unhappy, by the home of the dark-striped perch. Till at last, with a flash of light and a rattle and side-long lurch, I woke up dazed and witless, till my sorrow awoke again, And the grey of the morn was upon us as we sped through the poplar plain, By the brimming streams and the houses with their grey roofs warped and bent, And the horseless plough in the furrow, and things fair and innocent. And there sat my wife before me, and she, too, dreamed as she slept; For the slow tears fell from her eyelids as in her sleep she wept. But Arthur sat by my side and waked; and flushed was his face, And his eyes were quick to behold the picture of each fair place That we flashed by as on we hurried; and I knew that the joy of life Was strongly stirred within him by the thought of the coming strife. Then I too thought for a little, It is good in grief’s despite, It is good to see earth’s pictures, and so live in the day and the light. Yea, we deemed that to death we were hastening, and it made our vision clear, And we knew the delight of our life-days, and held their sorrow dear.

But now when we came unto Paris and were out in the sun and the street, It was strange to see the faces that our wondering eyes did meet; Such joy and peace and pleasure! That folk were glad we knew, But knew not the why and the wherefore; and we who had just come through The vanquished land and down-cast, and there at St. Denis e’en now Had seen the German soldiers, and heard their bugles blow, And the drum and fife go rattling through the freshness of the morn— Yet here we beheld all joyous the folk they had made forlorn! So at last from a grey stone building we saw a great flag fly, One colour, red and solemn ’gainst the blue of the spring-tide sky, And we stopped and turned to each other, and as each at each did we gaze, The city’s hope enwrapped us with joy and great amaze.

As folk in a dream we washed and we ate, and in all detail, Oft told and in many a fashion, did we have all yesterday’s tale: How while we were threading our tangle of trouble in London there, And I for my part, let me say it, within but a step of despair, In Paris the day of days had betid; for the vile dwarf’s stroke, To madden Paris and crush her, had been struck and the dull sword broke; There was now no foe and no fool in the city, and Paris was free; And e’en as she is this morning, to-morrow all France will be. We heard, and our hearts were saying, “In a little while all the earth—” And that day at last of all days I knew what life was worth; For I saw what few have beheld, a folk with all hearts gay. Then at last I knew indeed that our word of the coming day, That so oft in grief and in sorrow I had preached, and scarcely knew If it was but despair of the present or the hope of the day that was due— I say that I saw it now, real, solid and at hand.

And strange how my heart went back to our little nook of the land, And how plain and clear I saw it, as though I longed indeed To give it a share of the joy and the satisfaction of need That here in the folk I beheld. For this in our country spring Did the starlings bechatter the gables, and the thrush in the thorn-bush sing, And the green cloud spread o’er the willows, and the little children rejoice And shout midst a nameless longing to the morning’s mingled voice; For this was the promise of spring-tide, and the new leaves longing to burst, And the white roads threading the acres, and the sun-warmed meadows athirst. Once all was the work of sorrow and the life without reward, And the toil that fear hath bidden, and the folly of master and lord; But now are all things changing, and hope without a fear Shall speed us on through the story of the changes of the year. Now spring shall pluck the garland that summer weaves for all, And autumn spread the banquet and winter fill the hall. O earth, thou kind bestower, thou ancient fruitful place, How lovely and beloved now gleams thy happy face!

And O mother, mother, I said, hadst thou known as I lay in thy lap, And for me thou hopedst and fearedst, on what days my life should hap, Hadst thou known of the death that I look for, and the deeds wherein I should deal, How calm had been thy gladness! How sweet hadst thou smiled on my weal! As some woman of old hadst thou wondered, who hath brought forth a god of the earth, And in joy that knoweth no speech she dreams of the happy birth.

Yea, fair were those hours indeed, whatever hereafter might come, And they swept over all my sorrow, and all thought of my wildered home. But not for dreams of rejoicing had we come across the sea: That day we delivered the letters that our friends had given to me, And we craved for some work for the cause. And what work was there indeed, But to learn the business of battle and the manner of dying at need? We three could think of none other, and we wrought our best therein; And both of us made a shift the sergeant’s stripes to win, For diligent were we indeed: and he, as in all he did, Showed a cheerful ready talent that nowise might be hid, And yet hurt the pride of no man that he needs must step before. But as for my wife, the _brancard_ of the ambulance-women she wore, And gently and bravely would serve us; and to all as a sister to be— A sister amidst of the strangers—and, alas! a sister to me.

XII MEETING THE WAR-MACHINE

SO we dwelt in the war-girdled city as a very part of its life. Looking back at it all from England, I an atom of the strife, I can see that I might have seen what the end would be from the first, The hope of man devoured in the day when the Gods are athirst. But those days we lived, as I tell you, a life that was not our own; And we saw but the hope of the world, and the seed that the ages had sown, Spring up now a fair-blossomed tree from the earth lying over the dead; Earth quickened, earth kindled to spring-tide with the blood that her lovers have shed, With the happy days cast off for the sake of her happy day, With the love of women foregone, and the bright youth worn away, With the gentleness stripped from the lives thrust into the jostle of war, With the hope of the hardy heart forever dwindling afar.

O Earth, Earth, look on thy lovers, who knew all thy gifts and thy gain, But cast them aside for thy sake, and caught up barren pain! Indeed of some art thou mindful, and ne’er shalt forget their tale, Till shrunk are the floods of thine ocean and thy sun is waxen pale. But rather I bid thee remember e’en these of the latter days, Who were fed by no fair promise and made drunken by no praise. For them no opening heaven reached out the martyr’s crown; No folk delivered wept them, and no harvest of renown They reaped with the scythe of battle; nor round their dying bed Did kindly friendly farewell the dew of blessing shed; In the sordid streets of the city mid a folk that knew them not, In the living death of the prison didst thou deal them out their lot, Yet foundest them deeds to be doing; and no feeble folk were they To scowl on their own undoing and wail their lives away; But oft were they blithe and merry and deft from the strife to wring Some joy that others gained not midst their peaceful wayfaring. So fared they, giftless ever, and no help of fortune sought. Their life was thy deliverance, O Earth, and for thee they fought; Mid the jeers of the happy and deedless, mid failing friends they went To their foredoomed fruitful ending on the love of thee intent.

Yea and we were a part of it all, the beginning of the end, That first fight of the uttermost battle whither all the nations wend; And yet could I tell you its story, you might think it little and mean. For few of you now will be thinking of the day that might have been, And fewer still meseemeth of the day that yet shall be, That shall light up that first beginning and its tangled misery. For indeed a very machine is the war that now men wage; Nor have we hold of its handle, we gulled of our heritage, We workmen slaves of machines. Well, it ground us small enough This machine of the beaten Bourgeois; though oft the work was rough That it turned out for its money. Like other young soldiers at first I scarcely knew the wherefore why our side had had the worst; For man to man and in knots we faced the matter well; And I thought, well to-morrow or next day a new tale will be to tell. I was fierce and not afraid; yet O were the wood-sides fair, And the crofts and the sunny gardens, though death they harboured there! And few but fools are fain of leaving the world outright, And the story over and done, and an end of the life and the light. No hatred of life, thou knowest, O Earth, mid the bullets I bore, Though pain and grief oppressed me that I never may suffer more. But in those days past over did life and death seem one; Yea the life had we attained to which could never be undone.

You would have me tell of the fighting? Well, you know it was new to me, Yet it soon seemed as if it had been for ever, and ever would be. The morn when we made that sally, some thought (and yet not I) That a few days and all would be over: just a few had got to die, And the rest would be happy thenceforward. But my stubborn country blood Was bidding me hold my halloo till we were out of the wood. And that was the reason perhaps why little disheartened I was, As we stood all huddled together that night in a helpless mass, As beaten men are wont: and I knew enough of war To know midst its unskilled labour what slips full often are.

There was Arthur unhurt beside me, and my wife come back again, And surely that eve between us there was love though no lack of pain As we talked all the matter over, and our hearts spake more than our lips; And we said, “We shall learn, we shall learn—yea, e’en from disasters and slips.”

Well, many a thing we learned, but we learned not how to prevail O’er the brutal war-machine, the ruthless grinder of bale; By the bourgeois world it was made, for the bourgeois world; and we, We were e’en as the village weaver ’gainst the power-loom, maybe. It drew on nearer and nearer, and we ’gan to look to the end— We three, at least—and our lives began with death to blend; Though we were long a-dying—though I dwell on yet as a ghost In the land where we once were happy, to look on the loved and the lost.

XIII THE STORY’S ENDING

HOW can I tell you the story of the Hope and its defence? We wrought in a narrow circle; it was hither and thither and thence; To the walls, and back for a little; to the fort and there to abide, Grey-beards and boys and women; they lived there—and they died; Nor counted much in the story. I have heard it told since then, And mere lies our deeds have turned to in the mouths of happy men, And e’en those will be soon forgotten as the world wends on its way, Too busy for truth or kindness. Yet my soul is seeing the day When those who are now but children the new generation shall be, And e’en in our land of commerce and the workshop over the sea, Amid them shall spring up the story; yea the very breath of the air To the yearning hearts of the workers true tale of it all shall bear. Year after year shall men meet with the red flag over head, And shall call on the help of the vanquished and the kindness of the dead. And time that weareth most things, and the years that overgrow The tale of the fools triumphant, yet clearer and clearer shall show The deeds of the helpers of menfolk to every age and clime, The deeds of the cursed and the conquered that were wise before their time.

Of these were my wife and my friend; there they ended their wayfaring Like the generations before them thick thronging as leaves of the spring, Fast falling as leaves of the autumn as the ancient singer hath said, And each one with a love and a story. Ah the grief of the early dead! “What is all this talk?” you are saying; “why all this long delay?” Yes, indeed, it is hard in the telling. Of things too grievous to say I would be, but cannot be, silent. Well, I hurry on to the end— For it drew to the latter ending of the hope that we helped to defend. The forts were gone and the foemen drew near to the thin-manned wall, And it wanted not many hours to the last hour and the fall, And we lived amid the bullets and seldom went away To what as yet were the streets by night-tide or by day. We three, we fought together, and I did the best I could, Too busy to think of the ending; but Arthur was better than good; Resourceful, keen and eager, from post to post he ran, To thrust out aught that was moving and bring up the uttermost man, He was gone on some such errand, and was absent a little space, When I turned about for a moment and saw my wife’s fair face, And her foot set firm on the rampart, as she hastened here and there, To some of our wounded comrades such help as she could to bear. Then straight she looked upon me with such lovely, friendly eyes Of the days gone by and remembered, that up from my heart ’gan rise The choking sobbing passion; but I kept it aback, and smiled, And waved my hand aloft—But therewith her face turned wild In a moment of time, and she stared along the length of the wall, And I saw a man who was running and crouching, stagger and fall, And knew it for Arthur at once; but voiceless toward him she ran, I with her, crying aloud. But or ever we reached the man, Lo! a roar and a crash around us and my sick brain whirling around, And a white light turning to black, and no sky and no air and no ground, And then what I needs must tell of as a great blank; but indeed No words to tell of its horror hath language for my need: As a map is to a picture, so is all that my words can say.

But when I came to myself, in a friend’s house sick I lay Amid strange blended noises, and my own mind wandering there; Delirium in me indeed and around me everywhere. That passed, and all things grew calmer, I with them: all the stress That the last three months had been on me now sank to helplessness. I bettered, and then they told me the tale of what had betid; And first, that under the name of a friend of theirs I was hid, Who was slain by mere misadventure, and was English as was I, And no rebel, and had due papers wherewith I might well slip by When I was somewhat better. Then I knew, though they had not told, How all was fallen together, and my heart grew sick and cold. And yet indeed thenceforward I strove my life to live, That e’en as I was and so hapless I yet might live to strive. It was but few words they told me of that murder great and grim, And how with the blood of the guiltless the city’s streets did swim, And of other horrors they told not, except in a word or two, When they told of their scheme to save me from the hands of the villainous crew, Whereby I guessed what was happening in the main without detail. And so at last it came to their telling the other tale Of my wife and my friend; though that also methought I knew too well. Well, they said that I had been wounded by the fragment of a shell, Another of which had slain her outright, as forth she ran Toward Arthur struck by a bullet. She never touched the man Alive and she also alive; but thereafter as they lay Both dead on one litter together, then folk who knew not us, But were moved by seeing the twain so fair and so piteous, Took them for husband and wife who were fated there to die, Or, it may be lover and lover indeed—but what know I?

Well, you know that I ’scaped from Paris, and crossed the narrow sea, And made my way to the country where we twain were wont to be, And that is the last and the latest of the tale I have to tell. I came not here to be bidding my happiness farewell, And to nurse my grief and to win me the gain of a wounded life, That because of the bygone sorrow may hide away from the strife. I came to look to my son, and myself to get stout and strong, That two men there might be hereafter to battle against the wrong; And I cling to the love of the past and the love of the day to be, And the present, it is but the building of the man to be strong in me.

CHANTS FOR SOCIALISTS

THE DAY IS COMING

COME hither, lads, and hearken, for a tale there is to tell, Of the wonderful days a-coming, when all shall be better than well.

And the tale shall be told of a country, a land in the midst of the sea, And folk shall call it England in the days that are going to be.

There more than one in a thousand in the days that are yet to come Shall have some hope of the morrow, some joy of the ancient home.

For then—laugh not, but listen to this strange tale of mine— All folk that are in England shall be better lodged than swine.

Then a man shall work and bethink him, and rejoice in the deeds of his hand, Nor yet come home in the even too faint and weary to stand.

Men in that time a-coming shall work and have no fear For to-morrow’s lack of earning and the hunger-wolf anear.

I tell you this for a wonder, that no man then shall be glad Of his fellow’s fall and mishap to snatch at the work he had.

For that which the worker winneth shall then be his indeed, Nor shall half be reaped for nothing by him that sowed no seed.

O strange new wonderful justice! But for whom shall we gather the gain? For ourselves and for each of our fellows, and no hand shall labour in vain.

Then all Mine and all Thine shall be Ours, and no more shall any man crave For riches that serve for nothing but to fetter a friend for a slave.

And what wealth then shall be left us when none shall gather gold To buy his friend in the market, and pinch and pine the sold?

Nay, what save the lovely city, and the little house on the hill, And the wastes and the woodland beauty, and the happy fields we till;

And the homes of ancient stories, the tombs of the mighty dead; And the wise men seeking out marvels, and the poet’s teeming head;

And the painter’s hand of wonder; and the marvellous fiddle-bow, And the banded choirs of music: all those that do and know.

For all these shall be ours and all men’s, nor shall any lack a share Of the toil and the gain of living in the days when the world grows fair.

* * * * *

Ah! such are the days that shall be! But what are the deeds of to-day, In the days of the years we dwell in, that wear our lives away?

Why, then, and for what are we waiting? There are three words to speak: WE WILL IT, and what is the foeman but the dream-strong wakened and weak?

O why and for what are we waiting? While our brothers droop and die, And on every wind of the heavens a wasted life goes by.

How long shall they reproach us where crowd on crowd they dwell, Poor ghosts of the wicked city, the gold-crushed hungry hell?

Through squalid life they laboured, in sordid grief they died, Those sons of a mighty mother, those props of England’s pride.

They are gone; there is none can undo it, nor save our souls from the curse; But many a million cometh, and shall they be better or worse?

It is we must answer and hasten, and open wide the door For the rich man’s hurrying terror, and the slow-foot hope of the poor.

Yea, the voiceless wrath of the wretched, and their unlearned discontent, We must give it voice and wisdom till the waiting-tide be spent.

* * * * *

Come, then, since all things call us, the living and the dead, And o’er the weltering tangle a glimmering light is shed.

Come, then, let us cast off fooling, and put by ease and rest, For the CAUSE alone is worthy till the good days bring the best.

Come, join in the only battle wherein no man can fail, Where whoso fadeth and dieth, yet his deed shall still prevail.

Ah! come, cast off all fooling, for this, at least, we know: That the Dawn and the Day is coming, and forth the Banners go.

THE VOICE OF TOIL

I HEARD men saying, Leave hope and praying, All days shall be as all have been; To-day and to-morrow bring fear and sorrow, The never-ending toil between.

When Earth was younger mid toil and hunger, In hope we strove, and our hands were strong; Then great men led us, with words they fed us, And bade us right the earthly wrong.

Go read in story their deeds and glory, Their names amidst the nameless dead; Turn then from lying to us slow-dying In that good world to which they led;

Where fast and faster our iron master, The thing we made, for ever drives, Bids us grind treasure and fashion pleasure For other hopes and other lives.

Where home is a hovel and dull we grovel, Forgetting that the world is fair; Where no babe we cherish, lest its very soul perish; Where our mirth is crime, our love a snare.

Who now shall lead us, what god shall heed us As we lie in the hell our hands have won? For us are no rulers but fools and befoolers, The great are fallen, the wise men gone.

* * * * *

I heard men saying, Leave tears and praying, The sharp knife heedeth not the sheep; Are we not stronger than the rich and the wronger, When day breaks over dreams and sleep?

Come, shoulder to shoulder ere the world grows older! Help lies in nought but thee and me; Hope is before us, the long years that bore us Bore leaders more than men may be.

Let dead hearts tarry and trade and marry, And trembling nurse their dreams of mirth, While we the living our lives are giving To bring the bright new world to birth.

Come, shoulder to shoulder ere earth grows older The Cause spreads over land and sea; Now the world shaketh, and fear awaketh And joy at last for thee and me.

NO MASTER

SAITH man to man, We’ve heard and known That we no master need To live upon this earth, our own, In fair and manly deed. The grief of slaves long passed away For us hath forged the chain, Till now each worker’s patient day Builds up the House of Pain.

And we, shall we too, crouch and quail, Ashamed, afraid of strife, And lest our lives untimely fail Embrace the Death in Life? Nay, cry aloud, and have no fear, We few against the world; Awake, arise! the hope we bear Against the curse is hurled.