Part 6

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.