The Poetical Works of George Barlow In Ten [Eleven] Volumes |
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| V. |
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| IX. |
| X. |
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| SONNETS OF EMPIRE |
| I. |
| II. |
| III. |
| IV. |
| V. |
| VI. |
| VII. |
| VIII. |
| IX. |
| X. |
| XI. |
| XII. |
| XIII. |
| XIV. |
| XV. |
| XVI. |
| XVII. |
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| XX. |
| XXI. |
| XXII. |
 | The Poetical Works of George Barlow |  |
315
SONNETS OF EMPIRE
317
SONNET I
A PRIME MINISTER
With clank of hammer and with clink of steel
The German dockyards echo, day and night.
Unnumbered legions ripen for the fight
While English statesmen fawn and cringe and kneel.
In English dockyards men without a meal
Stand idle, sullen, in most piteous plight.
Asquith, found brazen in the whole world's sight,
Stamps truth to dust with a most shameless heel.
Our Navy chained, mishandled, and held back,
Pants feebly along the inexorable track,
While the grim German Navy swells apace.
Though this man knows and England knows he lies,
No thunder threatens from the silent skies
And no truth's Angel smites him in the face.
December 21, 1909.
318
SONNET II
A PRAYER
That these may pass from power, and men may rise
Born of the moment, equal to the time,
Keen-eyed to probe the black depths of a crime,
Most proudly fearless, mercilessly wise!
Armoured to win the incalculable prize
A nobler England flashes forth, sublime,
Whose fleets shall carry peace from clime to clime,
Or thunder war, till the last despot dies.
One moment of sharp struggle grim and grave,
Then with her heel upon the Arch-Serpent's head
May England stand, she who just now was dead
And no man deemed that God or man could save!
But now her feet are swift upon the wave
And golden morning lightens round her tread
December 21, 1909.
319
SONNET III
A CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER
“Lord Savile, speaking at Eakring in support of Mr. Hume Williams, Unionist Candidate for the Bassetlaw division of Notts, said that 200 members of the House of Lords had been in the Army and Navy, and seventy served as volunteers in the South African War.
“What was Mr. Lloyd-George doing while these peers were gallantly fighting for their Queen and country, and England was mourning the loss of so many brave sons? He was sitting comfortably in the House of Commons. This was the man—this miserable Little Englander—this enemy of his King and country—who now sought to destroy the Lords, and who considered no device too mean or low to attain this end.”
—Daily Mail, December 23, 1909.The straight good thrust!—and every English soul
That watched the blow felt that the stroke was meet.
When true men speak, base demagogues retreat
Or snarl and foam, furious beyond control.
Remember how this man, when horror stole
From home to home with red news to repeat,
Sat with the dogs who yelped at each defeat
And louder grew, while darker grew the goal.
If in some Dantesque fashion stern and great
320
Could fall, would not this man be hurled by Fate
Far from the stars, the sea-waves and the sky,
For ever doomed to twist and writhe among
The venomous refuse of his own foul tongue?
321
SONNET IV
PERFECT IGNOMINY
To tax the rich and make the poor man's lot
Harder; to watch the German fleet expand;
To leave our Navy weak and undermanned;
To hear truth told and alter not a jot;
To shuffle, quibble, drivel, palter, plot;
To skulk round corners, lest some woman's hand
Strike; to give aid to every alien land;
To leave our working folk to starve and rot;
To clip the Army and curtail the Fleet;
To cringe to every rowdy in the street;
To cadge for votes, half knave, half smug-faced fool;
Was this enough? Nay, he must add to this
A lecherous longing for the Irish kiss,
A shameless rank adultery with Home Rule.
December 31, 1909.
322
SONNET V
VICTORY
[_]
At the General Election of January, 1910, the Unionist Party, in the face of lying and misrepresentation unprecedented in English electoral history, secured a net gain of 105 seats.
Breaks, and a newer nobler day begun
Restores to England gladness and the sun.
'Mid lies and deeds too base for aught but scorn
Rulers 'mid lies and base devices born
Feel death upon them, see their brief reign done,
And watch the swift sands through the hour-glass run,
Crime-smeared, by foul dissensions racked and torn.
The traitors slowly pass into the night
With furtive wolf-like gaze and shackled hands,
While England in the golden sunlight stands,
Her eyes made glorious with imperial light,
And one wild trumpet-blast proclaims her free
From dawn to sunset and from sea to sea.
February 6, 1910.
323
SONNET VI
“ONCE AGAIN”
“What are these that howl and hiss across the strait of westward water?
What is he who floods our ears with speech in flood?
See the long tongue lick the dripping hand that smokes and reeks of slaughter!
See the man of words embrace the man of blood!”
Swinburne's poem, “The Commonweal, a Song for Unionists”: published in the Times on the eve of the Home Rule Election of 1886.
What is he who floods our ears with speech in flood?
See the long tongue lick the dripping hand that smokes and reeks of slaughter!
See the man of words embrace the man of blood!”
Swinburne's poem, “The Commonweal, a Song for Unionists”: published in the Times on the eve of the Home Rule Election of 1886.
Another long tongue licks another hand,
And once again the battle must be fought
As though the former strange great fight were nought.
Wrath, doom and darkness, shadow all the land.
Left are a few—a staunch unbroken band
Who will not bow the knee. Unbribed, unbought,
They give their lives, their prayers, their toil, their thought,
Freely; and if they fall, their fall is grand.
Men who loved England, when her nobler heart
Tore Gladstone's webs and sophistries apart
And wrenched the clean truth from him without fear,
Stand firm: while all wise spirits and faithful pray
That scorn may sweep such Ministers away,
Lest blood should stain the Coronation Year.
December 11, 1910.
324
SONNET VII
A LIBERAL PROGRAMME
Though Gladstone erred, it was a Titan's sin.
But his successors—Liberals? What of these?
To keep in place by crawling on their knees
Through muddiest Labour bogs, or plunging in:
To make five hundred Peers, all on the grin,
'Mid scorn of proud Dominions over-seas:
Shameless, to drink shame's blackest filthiest lees:
To play with flames of War, so they but win:
This is their plan. To build their power on lies:
To toss each dog the sop that satisfies:
Then, once their project is in perfect swing,
To prostitute the Flag 'neath Redmond's feet,
Reduce our Navy to a fourth-class Fleet,
To sell the nation and coerce the King.
December 11, 1910.
325
SONNET VIII
“BRAVE WORDS!”
“I will suppose that owing to some cause the Liberal Party was called upon to deal with this great Constitutional question of the Government of Ireland in a position where it was only a minority dependent on the Irish vote for converting it into a majority.
“Now, gentlemen, I tell you seriously and solemnly that although I believe the Liberal Party itself to be honourable, patriotic, and trustworthy, in such a position as this it would not be safe for it to enter upon the consideration of the principle of a measure with respect to which at every step of its progress it would be in the power of a party coming from Ireland to say: ‘Unless you do this and unless you do that we will turn you out tomorrow...’
“Not only the Liberal Party, but the Empire, will be in danger, because questions of the gravest moment and of Imperial weight and of vast consequences may come forward, and there will be no party qualified to deal with them in that independence of position which alone can secure a satisfactory and an honourable issue.”
—Mr. Gladstone, speaking at Edinburgh on November 9, 1885.Brave words!—But three months later he betrayed
England, himself, and Ireland. He forbore
To keep the “serious solemn” oath he swore.
All that his hands had built up, he unmade.
Men, foul with blood, he fondled and obeyed.
326
Warned us what not to do, then did far more.
A trickster's shuffling meanest game he played.
First having spoken truth, he did the lie.
Invoking “Empire,” next he chose to stake
Empire upon the casting of a die.
He sealed his murdered honour in the tomb:
Then, with a people weeping for his sake,
Marched madly towards the inexorable doom.
December 12, 1910.
327
SONNET IX
OUR “MODERATES”
I marked the Hell that will be. There I found
With thinnest star-flame given them for a light
Our “Moderates,” and I counted in that night
Grey, Haldane, Morley, Birrell, hound by hound.
Alive and damned, by his own falsehoods bound,
Birrell felt Ireland's hate like poison bite:
Morley, with India saved in his despite,
Had India's curse to hold him underground.
I watched in dust and chains the docile Crewe
Who sneered at Roberts, yet no lightning slew:
Who, 'mid the laughter of the House of Lords
Feeblest and foolishest of all things born,
Too weak for wrath of man or woman's scorn,
Moved to send Germany our broken swords.
December 13, 1910.
328
SONNET X
THE CHARGE OF THE PEERS' BRIGADE
“Noble six hundred!”
—Tennyson.
Asquith's five hundred Peers! Brave souls who stoop
When Redmond foams with slaughterous intent
To be his serving-men: bold warriors bent
Like reeds when Dillon's Irish curse and hoop.
Weighted with unctuous phrases till they droop,
Chaste flowers of choicest Nonconformist scent,
May not their robes be splashed, their ermine rent?
Hell's scorn may greet and blast the godly troop.
Think how tumultuous England will deride,
Think how our kindred o'er the seas will jeer,
As each proud noble marches to his place,
His belly puffed with hopes, his brain with pride,
His past anonymous, his future clear,
Gold in his hands, and Judas in his face!
December 13, 1910.
329
SONNET XI
FIELD-MARSHAL EARL ROBERTS
He told the truth to England.—Never yet
Has any told the straight truth without fear
But England's deepest soul has given an ear.
The Commons paltered, timorous statesmen met:
Not one would trust the nation. 'Mid regret,
Hate, anger, indecision, dawns the year
That should have brought the imperial moment here.
Lurid at sunrise, how will this year set?
One thing we know—that one man spoke the truth
And warned a palsied people. Once he drew,
And lit the darkness with a sudden sword.
He shamed our craven Church, our cowardly youth,
Our men debauched in brothel or in pew.
He wielded, once, the lightning of the Lord.
December 14, 1910.
330
SONNET XII
M. MÉLINE AND MR. ASQUITH
“I care no more for patriotism than for the dirt under my finger-nails.”
—Speech by a Socialist.
Once, only once, a group of men held sway
As wholly false and despicable as those
Whose grovelling souls dishonour and depose
Freedom, inveterate serfs whom slaves obey.
Till the black Dreyfus night-mare passed away
From wakened France when truth and Zola rose,
Méline was Asquith.—At one victim's throes
Tempestuous France grew armed, to mock or slay.
But what of men as truthless and as coarse
Here, who, for some malign nefarious scheme,
Plunge on from crime to crime without remorse:
Who, with mad curse and gibe or vulture's scream,
Cry, till their cowardly senseless throats turn hoarse,
“Empire is but a bauble or a dream?”
December 20, 1910.
331
SONNET XIII
ENGLAND DECADENT
“This people was once a terror to the world.”
—Chatham.
If we are doomed to watch the mighty land
That warriors' swords and singers' souls made great
Reel like a helmless vessel on her fate,
Saved by no mastering voice, no pilot's hand:
If leaders take to flight when fools withstand:
If, called to manhood's service for the State,
Men tremble and argue, plead and hesitate:
If we turn suppliants, who could once command:
If England's arm has lost its power to strike,
If England's heart has lost its power to feel,
If England's tongue has lost its power to speak
Truth to her statesmen like a thunder-peal,
War would be better; wherein strong and weak
May perish, undishonoured, all alike.
December 22, 1910.
332
SONNET XIV
CHRISTMAS, 1910
“Watcher, what of the night?”—The night is black
For the most part, but here and there a star
Shines forth,—how few and faint, how dim and far!
The thunder of guns upon the forward track
Is ceaseless. Limp and flabby, soft and slack,
From ball to concert, club to motor-car
Our “men” escort our “women.’ On a par
The sexes seem, for sex alike they lack.
Haunted by dreams of old Victorian days
Poets and thinkers contemplate, alone,
The ruins of an Empire half o'er-thrown:
Watch sparks predicting no bright Christmas blaze
But conflagrations kindled in wild ways,
Saddest and fiercest that this land has known.
December 23, 1910.
333
SONNET XV
THERE AND HERE
[_]
On December 21 and 22, 1910, two English officers, Captain Trench and Lieutenant Brandon, were tried at Leipzig, for espionage. They received a singularly fair and generous trial.
Ministers kicked by Socialistic feet
Or hoofed by Redmond's lambs that roar and bleat,
Now with mild accents, now with lungs of brass.
There, as from this distracted land we pass,
Militant order, tranquil and complete:
A German Army and a German Fleet
Backed by Crown, nobles, peasants, people, en masse.
There, a fair judgment given by generous men
Who, safe and unassailable at home,
Conscious of strength, can hold an even way:
While, here, our furious anti-patriots foam
And gnash their teeth like vicious curs at bay,
Or plot with Lloyd-George in some miners' den.
December 23, 1910.
334
SONNET XVI
THE WRITING ON THE WALL
“All history is the history of States once powerful and then decaying.
Is Great Britain to be numbered among the decaying States?”
—Joseph Chamberlain.
To count the swallows flying o'er the pond
Or circling round the pump: to sit and doze
While nation after nation gains and grows:
To march thus far, but not a step beyond.
To win an Empire—hugely to despond,
To hurl it from us: the Election shows
That half the nation thus decides. Who knows
What spell has fallen from what enchanter's wand?
We who dictated are content to bend:
To watch our fleets rejected of the sea,—
India, South Africa, in alien hands:
To hear the savage laughter of the lands
Crying, “This was England once. Now this is She;
Proud at the outset, abject at the end.”
December 27, 1910.
335
SONNET XVII
THE DECLARATION OF LONDON
Nations have risen and fallen, but none as yet
While every sane and patriot voice withstands
Has signed its own death-warrant, on demands
Most paltry most irrevocably set,
Though wrath and unappeasable regret
Thrill through the hearts and spirits of friendliest lands.
Like silliest fish lured on by subtlest hands
We plunge and leap and dart into the net.
Of all man's history's base and cowardly deeds
At which the historian sickens or despairs
No cowardlier baser deed was lightlier done
Than this that eloquent infamy prepares,
This,—that will darken if the plot succeeds
Our Empire's sunlit sea-way, and the sun.
May 2, 1911.
336
TWO SONNETS
SONNET XVIII
FOR CORONATION DAY, THURSDAY, JUNE 22, 1911.
I
At this stern moment when black treason prowlsFrom land to land, and base sedition plots,
While patriotism shrinks, and manhood rots,
And womanhood, degraded, shrieks and howls,
And decadent girls, half-dressed and eyed like ghouls,
Crowd mocking streets: while Irish, Welsh and Scots,
Would have the kingdom parcelled into lots:
While Little England snarls and spits and scowls:
At such an hour, when traitorous tongues go free
And every loyal heart commits a crime,
A keener sword is needed than of rhyme
That, Royal at home, Imperial o'er the sea,
Our English Monarch's opening reign may be
The turning-point of history and of time.
337
SONNET XIX
FOR CORONATION DAY, THURSDAY, JUNE 22, 1911.
II
No task uncertain, no half-dubious thingIs set before us. England up or down
Must journey, and with England moves the Crown.
Not to an Emperor, not to any King
Did seasons strange, austere or joyous, bring
So vast a chance of an undreamed renown:
Whether the statesmen-chatterers praise or frown,
Or world-wide jealousy point its venomed sting.
Dark India summons with a soul of fire:
Far Canada's plains, each snow-lit mountain-gorge,
Australia's heart, and Africa's desire:
While all who still can fight and still can pray
Cry, on this stately Coronation Day,
“God guard our Empire, and God save King George!”
338
SONNET XX
THE GREAT BETRAYAL
Fear, treachery, folly, intrigue, all that's base
And foul in politics, heaped up pell-mell
Converged, as if through some magician's spell,
When Lansdowne and his fate stood face to face.
Was no high instinct left, no pride of race?
Prone at the feet of Ford the noblesse fell:
And for one night the House of Lords was hell,
“His Lordship” striving to outlie “His Grace.”
Then...forth the traitors surged, one rabble-rout,
Each blindly pressing first to scamper out,
Lords, Bishops, one great shameless wrestling sea,
While from the tongues of those who still stood fast
As the black herd of wolves and apes swept past
Rose with a cheer the name of Halsbury.
339
SONNET XXI
THE NAVAL PRIZE BILL
[_]
The Naval Prize Bill, which carries with it the Declaration of London, was thrown out by the House of Lords on Tuesday, December 12, 1911.
Yet once again, as often, England's Lords,
Stood between her and meanest foemen's swords
Nor were found wanting in the crucial hour.
The Code wherethrough as from a vantage tower
Fly all the poisoned darts of alien hordes,
Devised to maim and bind her as with cords,
Shrinks like a parchment which red flames devour.
This much is left—the horror to conceive
(For this we must) that Englishmen were found
Of mind so feeble or of soul so base
As to fling German filth in England's face:
Conscious, to sell their country and achieve
Damnation here and elsewhere beyond bound.
December 13, 1911.
340
SONNET XXII
WOMAN SUFFRAGE
With screech of parrot or with yelp of fox
The wild dishevelled sisters cry for votes:
While each who honours woman sadly notes
How in vast thoughtless heartless dangerous flocks
These sexless creatures surge against the rocks
Of duty, love, and wreck their fragile boats
Till only some stray spar or top-mast floats,
Sight pitiful 'mid the rough green waves' shocks.
So, beaten down, dismayed and out of heart,
Fed forcibly on their own turgid dreams,
Will these mad women swiftly plunge apart
From all the world of work and honest schemes,
From noble passion and from glorious Art,
While Pethick Lawrence rants and Pankhurst screams.
January 23, 1912
| The Poetical Works of George Barlow | |