The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

“Germany must have a Navy of such strength that even for the strongest Naval Power, a war with her would involve such risks as to imperil its own supremacy.” —Preamble to the German Navy Act.

“Grave responsibilities rest upon any one who misleads our countrymen by encouraging them to continue in their belief that an invasion of these shores is impossible....It is my absolute belief that, without a military organization more adequate to the certain perils of the future, our Empire will fall from us and our power will pass away.” —Lord Roberts, speaking in the House of Lords, on Monday, November 23, 1908.

When the disconcerted Concert, with their instruments out of tune
Broke and scattered and vanished, came William's concert soon.
He grasped the hand of the Sultan, and his own from the grasp grew red:
“Lend me your valorous army, when the right time comes,” he said.

266

“Lend me your strong-thewed army, for I follow my god Bismarck
And I send no Pomeranian to break his bones in the dark.
If ever to throttle England becomes my brotherly work,
I can throttle her best by the fingers of the woman-strangling Turk.

“I will build a fleet gigantic, I will wait till the moment due,
And when that hour approaches, friend, my hope is in you.”
So the Sultan Abdul Hamid and William the Crafty clinked
Red-stained glasses together, and each at the other winked.

Then came Turkey's youngsters, and they carried a great reform,
And they did it without bloodshed, but they roused in the West a storm.
For “What's to become of my Army, if the Young Turks change in a night?”
Wringing his hands, cried William: and he hated the dawning light.

Then the Emperor Francis Joseph, and a pitiful thing was this,

267

Joined in the new base Concert, the concert of snakes that hiss.
For Herzegovina lured him, and the moral strife was brief:
An Emperor lied with an Emperor, a thief hitched on to a thief.

White-haired Francis Joseph!—Nay, not his was the fall.
Give the trickster's honours to strategist Aerenthal.
Bismarck, Metternich, taught him, and he learned his lesson well:
And when they cabled, he knew not that they cabled straight from hell.

Up with the Sultan's army! Down with the men who strive
That a newer nobler Turkey may conquer and grow and thrive!
Such was the Teuton's message, cynical, devilish, dark:
Worthy of statesman Satan, worthy of fiend Bismarck.

They were strong from warring with women,—like steel their muscles grew
As the babes and the younglings whimpered, and the wives and mothers flew.

268

What an ally was the Sultan! What a host to be led
By Abdul in eagled helmet, or William in fez of red!

So this Dual Alliance prospered, till the Young Turks rose in the night
Loathing the blood-stained darkness, longing for dawn and light.
Their hearts yearned out towards England, the land no Hamid has trod:
But that was a stab for William, though he trusted in Bismarck's God.

Bismarck's God would be for him. He would bend and would hear
The Emperor apt at sermons, big with a godly fear.
So he prayed to God and Bismarck: and their Dual answer came,
Tongued like the flash of cannons, written in words of flame.

“Look to our Navy, William. That is the thing to do.
England is old and weary, and the world is sick of her too.
England was always a braggart: but she took three years to beat
A handful of Boers in their kopjes. William, strengthen the fleet.”

269

So he hearkened to Bismarck pleading, and he never thought it odd
That behind the cuirassed German stood a cloven-footed God.
He knew not the God of England, for Christ smiles full in His gaze
And He guides the sons of England, if England walks in His ways.

Then to the West turned William, and his naval instincts grew:
Wherever he turned that tattered old flag of Britain flew.
“Pile up our naval programmes! On with the ships!” said he.
“Soon we shall hustle England. Leave but the job to me.”

So the Navy Bills kept passing, and the big preamble said
“On the heels of earth's mightiest Navy we intend ere long to tread!”
“The prize is vast,” thought William—“the love of the soul of the sea:
The waves that fought for England may fight in the end for me.”

270

Then at last the English hearkened, they awoke at last from sleep:
They heard the taunts of the giant, and his gibes at last sank deep.
Men and women wakened, and the soul of the sea once more
Spake to the soul of the nation, and it listened as heretofore—

“Be the cost what it may be, be the toil what it will,
Let England rule the waters with a mastering Navy still.
Long enough has the German vaunted, let him build till his shipyards quake,
Let him strain till his sinews splinter—he will never overtake.”

All the nation united, as a nation at last was heard;
And our inner strifes were forgotten, and one was the loyal word.
Let the German sweat and struggle till his blood-shot eyes grow dim:
Not for him is the ocean, her passion is not for him.

Our women were all divided: strange tastes and luxuries grew:

271

But they heard the big preamble, and they understood and knew
It was not a question of voting. Nay, they voted all alike.
Every vote was a sword-stroke, though need was never to strike.

The women whom Shakespeare drew for us, hearts of love and of flame,
When the German big preamble and the German challenge came,
Ceased to contend for trifles. What was the suffrage worth
If nothing was left to vote for, with England wiped from the earth?

So in the year one thousand nine hundred and nine, men saw
With passion and deep emotion, with the old delight and awe,
The soul of the sea brought closer, for ever face to face
With the conquering Anglo-Saxon, the one sea-conquering race.

For the Power that sways the ocean, can sway the lands as well:
Can lift all earth to a heaven, or sink all earth to a hell.

272

If the moustached German giant sways mankind, which will it be?
Militant force on the mainland: flames of hell on the sea.

Be not a moment in error: misjudge, mistake not at all.
Britain rules for freedom—if the British Power should fall,
If the Power that pocketed Alsace gets our Colonies well in his grip,
Freedom means violation, a kiss with a fang in the lip.

If compulsory service follows on the trumpet-call to the race
Blown by our foremost soldiers, that is little indeed to face.
Better compulsory service for the sake of the well-loved land
Than a slave's compulsory service, and cuffs from a master's hand.

Think not our enemies loiter: their chiefest end is in view.
Englishmen, Englishwomen, the centuries waited for you.
Yours is the word of the ages: for you the choice that will make
England the arbiter ever, England alert and awake.

Choose, for the moment presses. Choose, for the hour draws nigh.

273

Keep the command of the ocean, live then—lose it, and die.
Life and death are in balance: heaven and hell draw swords.
But the casting-vote for ever will rest with the wild sea's lords.

When the proud-sailed old Armada steered straight for the Cornish coast
Our ships were manned by seamen, each strong man good as a host.
But the wide-winged storm fought for us, the soul of the sea was aflame,
And we know the word of destruction that forth on the storm-wind came.

Again and again for England the soul of the sea has fought
And far in advance for England lie triumphs beyond all thought:
Triumphs of Art and Science, wonders that no man knows;
Light in the streams of the sunshine, love in the heart of the rose.

But we need the strong straight sword-arm, or Science will speak in vain;
And love in the hearts of our women is nought but a grief or a pain

274

If the virile guns can speak not, when the masterful moment comes,
With the roar of unleashed lions, that chimes to the roll of the drums.

In Africa God was with us, and a thousand blunders He
Watched but to overrule them, for He loves the soul of the sea:
And the soul of the sea prayed for us, and the sea's great Maker heard
The sob in her passionate waters, the sea's strange glorious word.

The sea's soul interceded, for the sea loved Nelson well:
Time to learn was given us, and we passed through Africa's hell,
And we bent to our work in earnest, and we won the game at last.
But that was a mere school-lesson: Pretoria lies in the past.

If the German moustached giant and his iron-drilled legions came,
Think of the homes of England! Think of the leaping flame!
Remember the blaze of Bazeilles. “What a city to sack!”

275

Cried Blücher, of old-world London—but he had no ships at his back.

If ever the English meadows and the English hillsides felt
The foot of the German giant, and the giant's foul blow dealt,
Never would horror greater have changed the land to a grave,
For the soul of an English woman is not the soul of a slave.

Therefore be wise, be ready.—Countrymen, how would it be
If all our former battles, our wrestles by land and sea,
Waterloo, Trafalgar, Inkerman, all were mere
Lessons of infant schooling? How if the test is here?

How if the long strange story has come to a point at last
When the land must strike for Empire, or be but a kingdom past?
Rome and Greece sank downward, every dog has his day,—
Every country a splendour, a crown, a change, a decay.

Hear but the word of warning. Watch but the moments flee
With the stout hearts ready to landward, and the brave eyes keen by sea;

276

And by land and sea the petition from men and women alike,
“God strike home for England, if the moment comes to strike!”

November, 1908.

277

A PROTEST

I

Just because I claim for woman highest rank and queenliest place
In her glory, in her beauty, in her gentle perfect grace,
Do I grieve to see her stooping to a quest the devil ordains,
For the devil it is who blinds her, and the devil it is who gains.

II

Higher than the highest of angels, so is woman in her power:
Envied of the stars and sunlight, making jealous bird and flower.
When I wrote of Her triumphant, I was thinking of her eyes
With the force of love within them, and the scorn of liars and lies.

III

Just because on her for ever turns the future of the race
I would have her pure, imperial, flawless both in form and face:

278

With a body like the marble and a rose's mystic power,
Teaching outline to the sculptor, teaching sweetness to the flower.

IV

When I sang of Her victorious, I was dreaming not of those
Whose ignoble hateful handling would deflower the fairest rose.
I was singing of the victory of the passionate God who gleams
In the eyes of English girlhood, and sends angels to her dreams.

V

If my words have been distorted, strained and twisted, misconceived,
It is woman who has suffered, and the singer who has grieved.
Though a larger danger threatens than the keenest pang to one:
For the soul of woman altered, alters flower and star and sun.

279

LE FAUX BONHOMME

“You English are mad, mad, mad as March hares. What has come over you that you are so completely given over to suspicions quite unworthy of a great nation? What more can I do than I have done?...I bade one of my officers procure for me as exact an account as he could obtain of the number of combatants in South Africa on both sides, and of the actual position of the opposing forces. With the figures before me, I worked out what I considered to be the best plan of campaign under the circumstances, and submitted it to my General Staff for their criticism. Then I despatched it to England, and that document, likewise, is among the State papers at Windsor Castle, awaiting the severely impartial verdict of history.” —The Kaiser, in the Daily Telegraph of October 28, 1908.

“The Kaiser told Mr. Hale that King Edward had been hounding and humiliating him for two years, and he was exasperated; that Germany was the paramount power in Europe, and England was trying to neutralize her power; that he (the Emperor) held France in the hollow of his hand, and Russia was of no account since the Japanese War.

“That if a pan-European war were inevitable the sooner it came the better, because he was now ready, and was tired of the suspense; that Great Britain had been a decadent nation ever since her victory over the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, because her cause was unrighteous and ungodly, and Divine judgment was bound eventually to overtake the powerful nation that waged such a war; that the Anglo-Japanese alliance was an iniquitous alliance against all the white races. England was proving absolutely her faithlessness as a Christian nation.”

—New York World, November 22, 1908.

280

“Why will you never trust me? What do my actions say?
When your generals flagged and loitered, when your African wealth was at stake,
I sent for the facts and the figures—devoted the best of a day
To settling for Roberts and Buller the road that their troops should take.

“In the archives of Windsor Castle you will find my maps and my plans.
History will do me justice: the ages that come will show
That my heart was one with England's, one if ever a man's
Strong heart beat for England, in that dread ‘Black Week’ of her woe.

“Yes: I am getting indignant. Too long your papers have sneered
And I lose at last all patience. I bubble and boil and chafe.
When Russia and France were plotting, it was I who interfered:
And I wired to Windsor Castle, to tell them England was safe.

281

“My ships for the far Pacific with purest friendly intent
I am scheming and building and fitting. Who knows what Japan may say
With her guns to the old-world nations, the Powers of the Continent?
The thunder of German broadsides may change the fate of a fray.”

So he declared, the Kaiser. But then to the West he turned
And he spoke in the ear of the writer, the Yankee editor, Hale.
And these are the thoughts he uttered, a lesson for all concerned,
And once for all with a vengeance the Kaiser lifted the veil.

“Hounded, pestered and flouted by England's Monarch, I feel
That the moment is ripe for decision. If war in the end must be
I would rather suspense were over, I am ready to draw the steel:

282

I believe in the Zeppelin air-ship, though England trusts in the sea.

“If all the nations in fury arise and collide and ignite
All that I ask for reward of putting the match to the flame
Will be Egypt, poor little Egypt: this, and the mad delight
Of feeling myself a war-god, a giant force in the game.

“Bismarck humbled the Frenchmen. What if a greater thing
Looms and rises before me—to prison no Emperor now
But to darken the splendour of England, to hunt and humble a King?
To chase and harry the hunter, to steal from the topmost bough?

“What was the glory of Bismarck, compared to the glory of him
Who, seeing the Transvaal farmers by England oppressed, downtrod,
Shall arise as a Priest and a Prophet, majestic, immaculate, grim,
The sword, the revolver and rifle, the scourge and the dagger of God?”

283

So in the month of November, with double and petulant tongue,
On an Englishman, then on a Yankee, the Kaiser foisted his freaks.
And this was the nations' comment, the judgment of old and of young:
“Listen and learn from the Kaiser. Believe not a word that he speaks.”

December, 1908.

284

LORD ROBERTS' SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS

Monday, November 23, 1908.

At a moment in our history when our foremost statesmen stood
Mute and foiled and cowed and futile, things of clay and shapes of wood,
Rose a soldier, and he pleaded with the wavering multitude.

Never yet for God and England, soldier spake a nobler word.
While the querulous lords around him mixed in conclave and conferred
England's heart made solemn answer, and the starriest heights were stirred.

Never yet austerer moment in the history of the race
Brought the halting nation grimly, yet superbly, face to face
With the God who guards our England by His sword-arm and His grace.

285

Never yet diviner instant in the days that were and are
Dawned in fire upon our planet, made man lordlier, kinglier far,
For the destiny of England shapes the future of our star.

All the constellations follow this our stately star's control
And the vast magnetic currents through the suns and systems roll
Hurled from planet unto planet, as on earth from soul to soul.

He who lost a son for England as he flashed along the fray,
Here in London, in the dimness of the English winter day,
Drew his sword again for England, and he flung the sheath away.

Clearly, calmly, very gently, yet with somewhat of high scorn,
Spake the Soldier to the lordlets, and his fervent words were borne
Far beyond the English borders, to the sunset and the morn.

East and West, to all the cities where the British flag still flies

286

Sped the word that slew deception and that foiled the god of lies,
Scoffed at ever by the weaklings, welcomed ever by the wise.

Later on, in days we know not, when beyond our fairest dreams
England forth upon the peoples with a stainless splendour gleams,
Men will grasp what that word scattered of a thousand hellish schemes.

Judas laughing, reincarnate, sat triumphant on a throne:
But he shuddered at the trumpet as the sudden blast was blown
And he knew his hour was over, and his boastings all outgrown.

England's unreturning moment and the doom of traitorous hordes
Came like lightning through the midnight when with words like strokes of swords
Roberts spoke for truth and England to the people, and the lords.

287

THE MODERN WOMAN

I

What an abyss for woman! Lo, what a depth to fall!
She who might be the helper, angel and guide of all,
Changed to a frenzied creature, abject, lunatic, wild,—
Something of hell in her madness, something in her of a child!

II

Curses on those who did it, the elder women who taught
English girls base lessons, poisoning soul and thought!
Cursed be these, the liars, who troubled the young girl's creed—
Told her that men were reptiles, reptiles they who mislead.

III

Cursed be these who, knowing nothing of love or of man,
First the pitiful story of wrong and deceit began!
What can set right or atone for it? Nothing, till hell's waves whirl
Round the throat of a woman who lies to the soul of a girl.

288

IV

Feminine tongues, snake-skilful, have brought us even to this.
Women who never have known the love in a strong man's kiss,
Never have known sweet passion that lights the land and the sea,
Never have known, nor will know it, while stars and the sun shall be,—

V

These, these most, these only, have changed the current of life
To a torrent of blood-red waters, and changed love's joy to a strife:
Mixing their base ambitions, their lust and anger and greed,
With the thoughts of flower-white girlhood, with our maidens' pure sweet creed.

VI

“Man is only a cipher”—so they, insolent, say.
“Ours is the sex victorious. Ours is the world of to-day.”
So they write foul lustful stories, and they poison England's life;
And they leave no English maiden fit for an English wife.

289

VII

In the old glad days our women were noblest of all upon earth:
Purest, happiest, sweetest; history's fairest birth.
But now they are changed and defiant. They have learned from the lips that lie
That man is a brute and a satyr, developed straight from the stye.

VIII

That is the teaching pestilent of the elder women whose lies
Have saddened the sun of England, and clouded the English skies.
Woman was once a flower, a sunlit beautiful rose.
Now she carries a dog-whip, and slashes at friends and foes.

IX

War between woman and woman, mad war, war to the knife,
War between woman and mankind, war between husband and wife,

290

This would result from the contest. Think you it turns upon votes?
The suffragettes' flag, Defiance, in a fiercer hurricane floats.

X

Contempt for the old traditions, scorn of love and of man,
Hate of the older England, the merciless creed of a clan.
A strange-eyed group hysterical, women in nought but the name,
This it will mean for England—and ours, our own, is the shame.

XI

Shame on the manhood of England, that has let this dark thing rise
To strength and to vehement boasting beneath unvigilant eyes!
Shame on the manhood of England, that has let this come to pass!
Shame on the men of putty, seduced by the women of brass!

XII

Man was the leader of woman: she looked to the man to lead.

291

She loved and obeyed and trusted. Love was her soul's one creed.
He has failed in his sacredest duty. The moment he flinched and fell
Woman became the leader, and is leading her sex to hell.

XIII

Certain the end is, certain. If a virile race should arise,
The sceptre will pass from our people, abject before our eyes.
Never a nation prospers, not even the nation of bees,
Where the feminine hosts are the leaders and the males are dwarfed and at ease.

XIV

“Read not the older authors. Let Charles Dickens alone.
His women are namby-pamby: abject slaves we disown.

292

Be not deceived by Shakespeare. Milton? What was he worth?
Rather study Lake Harris: a seer and a god upon earth.

XV

“Man is a lust organic, a tyrant lewd and supreme.
Woman no more shall be subject. Women, wake from your dream!
America's girls shall be leaders. The scorpion, man, shall be trod
Deep underfoot for ever, by woman the star-crowned God.

XVI

“Keep but the stripes for mankind—vitriol, whips and blows.
The stars are wanted for woman, who, scorning a slave's repose,
Arises, terrible, vengeful, a Mother with eyes of flame,
Driving her spouse before her, a man-form timid and tame.

XVII

“Woman must be the chooser, the arbiter. Hers is the word

293

That gives to her husband his mandate, bids passion speak and be heard.
If man should rebel when we treat him—much as a cat or a tyke—
The women who spit at policemen will never be slow to strike.

XVIII

“We have lost the sense of smelling. We leave it to man who knows
The scent of a rose from an onion, the scent of a shrimp from a rose.
In our progress onward and upward, the animal gifts we resign:
And garlic is even as violets, and drainage is like woodbine.

XIX

“Our lips are not eager for rapture of passion, for this we scorn.

294

Two embraces, two only, if two babes have to be borne!
We are passionless, vigilant, virgin, loud-tongued, sexless, austere.
Do you doubt us? Hand us a dog-whip. That argument makes all clear.”

XX

Such are the words of woman, literal, monstrous, fact,
To man and to woman her sister, the prelude to monstrous act.
Cursed be all such women! Blessed the first that goes
Along the street in the sunshine, sweet, a girl and a rose!

“Man is a tyrannous, organic lust.” —Thomas Lake Harris.

See Mrs. Swiney's book, The Awakening of Women. The authoress maintains that women have largely lost the sense of smell, and are consequently diviner and higher beings than man: smell being, in her opinion, the lowest and most animal of the senses, and therefore the first sense lost in an upward evolution.

Passion is only admissible, as a means for the procreation of children, according to the repulsive teaching of the neo-American female physiologists.

295

THE PATRIOT VOTER

“I am not interested in the nonsense Roberts talks.” —Letter of an Englishwoman of the year 1908.

I

“Wildest talk of an invasion! How can ever such thing be?
Give the suffrage to the women, give the vote to them and me.
Trust us—trust no ships or weapons—trust not bayonets or the sea.

II

“Roberts tells us—Roberts warns us—he is talking ‘nonsense’ quite.
I and God can put the Germans by our double vote to flight.
If I lift my star-ringed finger, they will vanish in a night.

296

III

“No: it does not ‘interest’ us, all this talk of swords and tars.
We are daughters of the future, we are sisters of the stars,
And our dreams are dreams pacific, not man's murderous cult of Mars.

IV

“We have never read a history, we know nought of gun or boat.
England does not ‘interest’ us. Let the throne and country float
Straight away to wreck stupendous, so we only get a vote!

V

“Little England is our England. Perish India, mount and plain!
Let some German, or some Russian, o'er the dark-skinned myriads reign!
Nought to us the thing can matter, if our petty ends we gain.

297

VI

“Are the Indian mobs seditious? Send a peaceful message there.
Is an Englishwoman murdered? Hold a meeting, and declare
That if several more are murdered, we shall think it most unfair.

VII

“That's the way to hold an Empire. It was sternly, keenly won.
But a swordless grasp may keep it, let no flash be seen of gun,
Not a word be heard of anger, till our mission's fully done.

VII

“This indeed is our proud mission—what was given us, to betray:
What was trusted to our keeping, with both hands to fling away:
What was won by battling centuries, to cast from us in a day.”

298

POWDER AND PATRIOTISM

“Dulce et decorum est pro patriâ mori.” —Horace.

“Is ultra-patriotism a good thing?” —British citizen of the twentieth century.

I

No doubt it is good and pleasant to find in the whole wide earth
Valour and strength and beauty, virtue and grace and worth:
It is right to be just to a Frenchman or German, an alien birth.

II

Victors in Art and in Science may Russian or Prussian be.
A German may study triumphant the nerves of a gnat or a flea.
Be large-souled, cosmopolitan. It matters nothing to me.

III

Never be insular, narrow. Teach your children at school
Never to fight or be furious—to follow the golden rule.
If a fool should strike at your left cheek, turn your right to the fool.

299

IV

This is excellent teaching: this is the fashion and mode.
Yet there are articles two, unchanged in my militant code—
That our bayonets refuse to bend and our powder consent to explode.

V

Russians, Germans, Italians, Austrians, Japs and Turks,
All are hearty good fellows, pleasing in ways and works:
Yet they have guns, torpedoes, swords, destroyers and dirks.

VI

Taking account of all things, thinking still in the road
That Nelson and Wellington followed, I cleave and cling to my code—
That British bayonets shall curve not, and British powder explode.

The British powder is said, on good authority, to be greatly inferior to the German. —December, 1908.

300

A WORD FOR THE ARMY

“Roberts is nothing but a soldier. He naturally sees as a soldier....

“The military spirit is the very child of the sex-devil—dividing into dualistic ranks class against class, and nation against nation, and sex against sex! ...

“I believe in a former letter I referred to a future life in which the Ego would no longer see, through sex bias, the ‘things that belong to God.’”

—English lady, and would-be voter.

“To Carlyle, nineteen centuries after Christ, as to Thucydides, four centuries before Christ, war is the supreme expression of the energy of a State as such, the supreme, the tragic hour, in the life-history of the city, the nation, as such....

“In the light of History, universal peace appears less as a dream than as a nightmare which shall be realized only when the ice has crept to the heart of the sun, and the stars, left black and trackless, start from their orbits....

“With us, let me repeat, the decision rests, with us and with this generation. Never since on Sinai God spoke in thunder has mandate more imperative been issued to any race, city, or nation than now to this nation and to this people.”

—“Reflections on the Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain.” By J. A. Cramb, M.A., Professor of Modern History, Queen's College, London.

301

I

1

Hark to a patriot's warning, worthy to store and keep
In our minds as a boon for ever, a prophecy sage and deep!
—“‘Roberts sees as a soldier’: this and nought else is he.
I am a woman-voter. As I woman, I think and see.
‘Roberts is only a soldier.’ I am for love and peace:
So I war with the old sex-devil, the devil of Rome and Greece,
The devil that so divides us. When sex with sex is one
The unified human creature will arise and shine as the sun.

2

“We must be unisexual. One sex, one alone,
Stands erect in the heavens, and stares at God on his throne.
All will be well when woman, with power and victory shod,
Destroys the division of sexes and blends with the sexless God.
From this division of sexes evil and sin had birth.
If man had been woman, and woman had never been woman on earth,
All had been well with the peoples, clothed in beauty and grace:
Bearded and moustached woman will save and exalt the race.

302

3

“The old mere masculine error of worship of form must cease.
Our booted and tight-laced beauty eclipses the beauty of Greece.
We are the form triumphant: no forms that Phidias saw
Could stir the beholder to terror, shaped by a loftier law
Than the law of sex we abolish, the law of the man and the maid,
Fit for the animal two-sexed, the law whose lessons degrade,
The law of the flowers' obsceneness, the law of the birds' loose joy,
The law that our teachers have given us the mandate now to destroy.

4

“Why will you understand not that sex shall be overthrown
And the perfume of blossoms scattered, and the scent of a rose unknown?
For our sanctified nostrils smell not, and our glorified nerves are vexed
No longer by dreams of passion, that thrill not the forms unsexed.

303

Vast is the pure deliverance. Chain upon chain might fall;
But the chain of the old sex-devil was the firmest chain of all.
Following scent, the senses will drop from us one by one
Till we hear not music, and feel not the lewd male warmth in the sun.

5

“Men will be lifted and gladdened when intellect keen they find
In woman. The soul's embraces, the kisses of mind and mind,
Will wholly supplant the kisses from lip to lip that flew
When the young world laughed like a satyr, and its passionate young lusts grew.
From the graze of the tiniest pin-point to the thrust of the savagest sword
Every pain is by reason of man the reasonless lord.
Change but man to a woman, pare but his tiger claws:
Then Eve may re-enter her Eden, as man the devil withdraws.”

II

1

But the birds and the blossoms answered, and the universe of God,

304

Fair as when never a woman with womanless fool's feet trod
Its hills and its flower-sown valleys—“If sex were lonely and one
The stars and the moon would perish, and night would involve the sun.
Not a star could gaze at its Maker, nor could God's eyes gaze at a rose,
If the glory of sex were abolished, the splendour of love that goes
Flaming from planet to planet, flashing from height to height,
For the passion of woman for man is the passion of God for light.

2

“The passion of man for woman is the passion of God for the rose,
His love for the soul of its sweetness, the marvellous scent that grows
Pure and soft on the senses till we know that the rose is one
With the passion of woman the blossom, with the passion of man the sun.
If the sexless lie and murderous that the sexless women have told

305

Could be true, were it but for a moment, God's heart would be changed and old:
All things sweet must vanish, flowers no more could be:
And the radiance purple or sapphire would fade from the fields of the sea.”

3

Love and battle together: this is the law of the race.
Strength and the masculine sword-arm: feminine curves and grace.
So hath the Lord designed it: so are his strange thoughts hurled
From man to woman, from woman to man, and from world to world.
Conflict, war, for ever! Palestine, Rome and Greece!
Conquering Goths and the Vandals! Races never at peace!
One thing only is certain: that Mars was armoured and shod
With fire and his red sword sharpened by the hand of actual God.

4

Nobler the ends for ever of the desperate strifes may be:

306

Loftier England's message as her hand grows firm on the sea:
Clearer her voice and her mandate as Nelson and Wellington meet:
The one with his word to our army, the other guiding our fleet.
But never till all stars darken and a sunless sky grows cold,
Never while morning's mantle is broidered on boundless gold,
While lives and the honour of women turn on the stroke of a sword,
May we put the steel and the scabbard back in the hand of the Lord.

5

Never—as Ruskin told us—can we draw diviner breath
Than in that great game of battle “where the stakes are life and death.”
So hath the Lord ordained it: so must this great thing be:
While a sword can flame in the sunlight, or a ship's gun flash on the sea.
Deep in the heart of our nation is love of the true and right;
Sternest passion for justice, passionate search for light.
While in the world are falsehood, treachery, craft and crime,
Armies of unseen warriors call on the sons of time.

307

III

1

Hear not the voices of women, sent to cajole and mislead,
The elder deceiving the younger, spreading a sexless creed:
Wholly divorced from England, a danger and curse to the land,
For their craft would weaken our manhood, and wheedle the sword from the hand.
For the sake of the nobler woman, the woman whom Dickens drew,
Milton and Shelley and Shakespeare, the woman tender and true,
Pure and divine and gentle, the woman whom England breeds,
England, England only, hear not the false-tongued creeds.

2

For the sake of the women of England, silent, loving unheard,
Those who have not yet spoken the sweet imperative word;
For the sake of the trust reposed in us, never reposed in a land,

308

In an old-world race or nation, direct from destiny's hand;
While the golden chance is given us, before the hour has fled,
Vote, ordain, that an army, noble and nobly led,
Shall spring from the manhood of England, armoured in truth and light
Passionate only for justice, stern alone for the right.

3

Once to a race, once only, Time speaks the imperial word.
There are other races ripening: there are other clarions heard.
Still the chance is before us, and evil counsellors call,
Saying, “What do we want with an army? Our ships can answer for all!”
If we heed the smooth-tongued pleaders, whether men or women they be,
If we add not a nation's army to a nation's strength at sea,
Destruction huge, undreamed of, on a craven land may leap;
Our fathers won at the sword-point, and the sword alone can keep.

309

4

But surely the call will be answered. Surely from hand to hand.
The signal torch will hasten, till its bright flame fills the land.
Surely from woman to woman the clear strong word will fly:
“To part from the love of England is worse, far worse, than to die.”
To say that the old Field-Marshal, urgent for England's sake,
Was talking but as a soldier, to sneer when a world is at stake,
This—and a woman did it—is worse, ignobler far,
Than war, though war be a demon, and war's red crown be a scar.

5

How if God “sees as a soldier”? How if from height to height
The bugle of endless battle peals for the endless right?
How if thunders the thunder, lightens the lightning's flame
Ever in scorn of meanness, ever in Love's own name?
How if an army knightly, strong through love of the land,

310

Gains from God in the highest might to war and withstand?
How if an army defending fields no foeman has trod
Strikes with the force stupendous of the sword and the passion of God?

“Dark and true and tender is the North.” —Tennyson.

311

THE ELEVENTH HOUR

I

Still an hour is left to hearken: still an hour is left to wake:
Still an hour to stifle discord and join hands for England's sake.
England, generous, largely trusting, asks what course will Asquith steer?
Asks for his sake, not for her sake, for her brightening road is clear.

II

Yet a moment's space is left him. Once for all he must decide:
Flinch and cower and lapse and perish, crawl and whine and skulk and hide,
Or stand forth an English statesman, stronger when the sword-blades gleam
And the thunder-clash of conflict scares the hucksters from their dream.

312

III

But if craven be the answer, if we hear some timorous plea,
From stern city unto city and from furious sea to sea
Will the Empire's verdict echo, flashed along the wires of time,
Judgment endless, unexampled, on an unexampled crime:

IV

“Leave to Asquith and McKenna, and the anti-English crew
Who could twist and cant and shuffle, while the grim risk deadlier grew,
As they tumble from their benches and regain their jackals' den,
The contempt of English school-girls and the curse of English men.”

March 26, 1909.

313

RETRIBUTION

While our rivals, ardent, eager, toiling on from day to day,
Seek to win and grasp the Trident, rule the waves with sovereign sway,
Our bold striving, our whole effort, is to fling the gift away,
To procure a moment's respite, one more instant of delay.

“Cease to probe and carp and question. Nay, inquiry shall be none.
We are sapient trusty Sea-Lords, all we do is wisely done.
If we choose to work in darkness, why let in the dangerous sun?
All is ready: armour-plating, mast and halyard, shot and gun.

“Never dream you cannot trust us. Mark how confident and clear
Rings the German bright war-trumpet on pale Europe's listening ear!

314

Every resonant note is peaceful, promise ample and sincere.
We will blow a friendly bugle, for our bugling friends to hear.”

But the nation rose in anger: as one man the nation rose
And a stormier Trumpet sounded, for it thundered forth the close
Of an era of deception, lies and frauds and shifts and shows,
And a fiery retribution on our leaders, not our foes.

March, 1909.

“The Trident must be in our fist.” —German Emperor.