Buch lesen: «Songs of the Army of the Night»

TO EDITH

 
“My sweet, my child, through all this night
   Of dark and wind and rain,
Where thunder crashes, and the light
   Sears the bewildered brain,
 
 
“It is your face, your lips, your eyes
   I see rise up; I hear
Your voice that sobs and calls and cries,
   Or shrills and mocks at fear.
 
 
“O this that’s mine is yours as well,
   For side by side our feet
Trod through these bitter brakes of hell.
   Take it, my child, my sweet!”
 

PREFACE

A few words of preface seem necessary in sending out this little book. It is to be looked on as the product of the life of a social worker in England, in his travels, and in Australia. The key-note of the First Part – “England” – is desperation, or, if any hope, then “desperate hope.” A friend once reported to me a saying of Matthew Arnold’s, that he did not believe in any man of intelligence taking a desperate view of the social problem in England. I am afraid that saying relegates me to the ranks of the fools, but I am content to remain there. I believe that never since 1381, which is the date of the Peasants’ Revolt, has England presented such a spectacle of the happiness of the tens, of the misery of the millions. It is not by any means the artisan, or the general or the agricultural labourer, who is the only sufferer. All society groans under the slavery of stupendous toil and a pittance wage. The negro slavery of the Southern States of America was better than the white slavery of to-day all over the earth, but more particularly in Europe and in America. Capitalism is built on the dreadful wrong of recompensing Labour, not according to the worth of its work, but according to the worth of its members in the market of unlimited competition, and that soon comes to mean the payment of what will hold body and soul together when in the enjoyment of health and strength. Landlordism is built on the dreadful wrong of sharing with Capitalism the plunder of Labour. Why are rents high in Australia? Because here Labour is scarcer, its wages correspondingly higher, and therefore Landlordism steps in to filch from Labour its hard-won comforts, and once more reduce it to the necessities of existence. The American slavers had to spend more in housing and keeping any fixed number of their slaves in serviceable condition than Capitalism spends in wages. Capitalism and Landlordism, like good Christian Institutions, leave the living to keep alive their living, and the dead to bury their dead. This cannot continue for ever. At least all the intelligent portion of the community will grow to see the injustice and attempt to abolish it. But when will the great mass of unintelligent people who have won a large enough share of the plunder of their fellows to minister to their own comforts – when will these, also, awake and see? England will realize the desperation of her social problem when its desperation is shown her by fire and blood – then, and not till then! What shall teach her her sins to herself is what is even now teaching her her sins to Ireland.

I make no apology for several poems in the First Part which are fierce, which are even blood-thirsty. As I felt I wrote, and I will not lessen the truth of what inspired those feelings by eliminating or suppressing the record of them. Rather, let me ask you, whoever you be, to imagine what the cause was, from the effect in one who was (unhappily) born and bred into the dominant class, and whose chief care and joy in life was in the pursuit of a culture which draws back instinctively from the violent and the terrible. I will go further. I will arraign my country and my day, because their iniquity would not let me follow out the laws of my nature, which were for luminosity and quiet, for the wide and genial view, but made me “take arms against a sea of troubles,” hoping only too often “by opposing to end them.” No, we make no apology for bloody sweat and for tears of fire wrung out of us in the Gethsemane and on the Calvary of our country: we make no apology to those whom we have the right to curse.

In the Second Part – “Here and There,” the record of a short trip in the East – the sight of the sin which England has committed not only against herself, against Ireland, against Scotland, but against India, against China, against the sweetest and gentlest people in the earth, the Japanese – the sight of this, and of the signs of England’s doom, the punishment for the abuse of the greatest trust any modern nation has had given to her, inspires a hatred which only that punishment can appease. In the Third Part – “Australia” – there is neither ferocity nor blood-thirstiness. Its key-note is hope, hope that dreads but does not despair.

I may add that in this edition I have sacrificed all merely personal aspects of the poems to attempt to give the book a more complete totality. We know well enough that allowance will rarely be made for any of these things: that our plea for comprehension will too often be an idle one. None the less we make it, for the sake of those who are willing to attempt to realize the social problem and to seek within themselves what they can do for its solution. We have no care whatever as to what view they take of it. Let them be with us or against us, it matters not, if only they will make this effort, if only they will ponder it in their hearts. Ninety-nine out of a hundred of us are concerned in this problem. We are all of us true sons of Labour who have suffered the robbery of the wages of Competition. One word more. The Australian is apt to deprecate the socialism of the European or the American. The darker aspects of the European or American civilization are not striking here. They are here; they are more than incipient, very much more; but they are not striking. Let such an one pause. “We speak of that which we do know,” and, for the rest, not only do we bid “him that has ears, to hear,” but “him that has eyes, to see.”

Brothers all over the earth, brothers and sisters, you of that silent company whose speech is only in the unknown deeds of love, the unknown devotions, the unknown heroisms, it is to you we speak! Our heart is against your heart; you can feel it beat. Soul speaks to soul through lips whose utterance is a need. In your room alone, in your lonely walks, in the still hours of day and night, we will be with you. We will speak with you, we will plead with you, for these piteous ones. In the evening trees you shall hear the sound of our weeping. Our sobs shall shake in the wind of wintry nights. We are the spirit of those piteous ones, the wronged, the oppressed, the robbed, the murdered, and we bid you open your warm heart, your light-lit soul to us! We will thrill you with the clarion of hate and defiance and despair in the tempest of land and sea. You shall listen to us there also. We will touch your eyes and lips with fire. No, we will never let you go, till you are ours and theirs! And you too, O sufferers, you too shall stay with us, and shall have comfort. Look, we have suffered, we have agonized, we have longed to hasten the hour of rest. But beyond the darkness there is light, beyond the turbulence peace. “Courage, and be true to one another.” “We bid you hope!”

THIS BOOK

I give this Book

to you, —

Man or woman, girl or boy, labourer, mechanic, clerk, house-servant, whoever you may be, whose wages are not the worth of your work, —no, nor a fraction of it – whose wages are the minimum which you and those like you, pressed by the desire for life in the dreadful struggle of “Competition,” will consent to take from your Employers who, thanks to it, are able thus to rob you: —

I give it to you,

in the hope that you may see how you are being robbed,– how Capital that is won by paying you your competition wages is plunder,– how Rent that is won by the increased value of land that is owing to the industry of us all, is plunder,– how the Capitalist and Landowner who over-ride you, how the Master or Mistress who work you from morning to night, who domineer over you as servants and despise you (or what is worse, pity you) as beggars, are the men and women whose sole title to this is, that they have the audacity and skill to plunder you, and you the simplicity and folly not to see it and to submit to it: —

I give this Book to you,

in the hope that you may at last realize this, and in your own fashion never cease the effort to make your fellow-sufferers realize it: —

I give it to you,

in the hope that you may formally enrol yourself in the ranks of the Army of the Night, and that you will offer up the best that has been granted you of heart and soul and mind towards the working out of that better time when, in victorious peace, we silence our drums and trumpets, furl our banners, drag our cannons to their place of rest, and solemnly disarming ourselves, become citizens once more or, if soldiers, then soldiers of the Army of the Day!

SONGS OF THE ARMY OF THE NIGHT

“Blessed are the poor in spirit.. blessed are the mourners.. Ye are the salt of the earth.” —

The Good tidings as given by Matthew.

PROEM

“OUTSIDE LONDON.”

 
In the black night, along the mud-deep roads,
   Amid the threatening boughs and ghastly streams,
Hark! sounds that gird the darknesses like goads,
   Murmurs and rumours and reverberant dreams,
Tramplings, breaths, movements, and a little light. —
 
 
The marching of the Army of the Night!
The stricken men, the mad brute-beasts are keeping
   No more their places in the ditches or holes,
But rise and join us, and the women, weeping
   Beside the roadways, rise like demon-souls.
Fill up the ranks!  What shimmers there so bright?
 
 
The bayonets of the Army of the Night!
Fill up the ranks!  We march in steadfast column,
   In wavering lines yet forming more and more;
Men, women, children, sombre, silent, solemn,
   Rank follows rank like billows to the shore.
Dawnwards we tramp, towards the day and light.
On, on and up, the Army of the Night!
 

I
“ENGLAND.”

IN THE CAMP

 
This is a leader’s tent.  “Who gathers here?”
   Enter and see and listen.  On the ground
Men sit or stand, enter or disappear,
   Dark faces and deep voices all around.
 
 
One answers you.  “You ask who gathers here?
   Companions!  Generals we have none, nor chief.
What need is there?  The plan is all so clear —
  The future’s hope, the present’s grim relief!
 
 
“Food for us all, and clothes, and roofs come first.
   The means to gain them?  This, our leaguered band!
The hatred of the robber rich accursed
   Keeps foes together, makes fools understand.
 
 
“Beyond the present’s faith, the future’s hope
   Points to the dawning hour when all shall be
But one.  The man condemned shall fit the rope
 
 
   Around the hangman’s neck, and both be free!
“The sun then rises on a happier land
   Where Wealth and Labour sound but as one word.
We drill, we train, we arm our leaguered band.
 
 
   What is there more to tell you have not heard?”
   Resolute, stern, menacing.  On the ground
They sit or stand, enter or disappear,
   Dark faces and deep voices all around.
 

“AXIOM.”

 
Let him who toils, enjoy
   Fruit of his toiling.
Let him whom sweats annoy,
   No more be spoiling.
 
 
For we would have it be
   That, weak or stronger,
Not he who works, but he
   Who works not, hunger!
 

DRILL

 
When day’s hard task’s done,
   Eve’s scant meal partaken,
Out we steal each one,
   Weariless, unshaken.
 
 
In small reeking squares,
   Garbaged plots, we gather,
Little knots and pairs,
   Brother, sister, father.
 
 
Then the word is given.
   In their silent places
Under lowering heaven,
   Range our stern-set faces.
 
 
Now we march and wheel
   In our clumsy line,
Shouldering sticks for steel,
   Thoughts like bitter brine!
 
 
Drill, drill, drill, and drill!
   It is only thus
Conquer yet we will
   Those who’ve conquered us.
 
 
Patience, sisters, mothers!
   We must not forget
Dear dead fathers, brothers;
   They must teach us yet.
 
 
In that hour we see,
   The hour of our desire,
What shall their slayers be?
   As the stubble to the fire!
 

EVENING HYMN IN THE HOVELS

 
“We sow the fertile seed and then we reap it;
   We thresh the golden grain; we knead the bread.
Others that eat are glad.  In store they keep it,
   While we hunger outside with hearts like lead.
Hallelujah!
 
 
“We hew the stone and saw it, rear the city.
   Others inhabit there in pleasant ease.
We have no thing to ask of them save pity,
   No answer they to give but what they please.
Hallelujah!
 
 
“Is it for ever, fathers, say, and mothers,
   That we must toil and never know the light?
Is it for ever, sisters, say, and brothers,
   That they must grind us dead here in the night?
Hallelujah!
 
 
   Have strength and pleasure of the food we make?
O we who hew, build, deck, shall we not also
   The happiness that we have given partake?
Hallelujah!”
 

IN THE STREET

LORD –

 
You have done well, we say it.  You are dead,
   And, of the man that with the right hand takes
Less than the left hand gives, let it be said
   He has done something for our wretched sakes.
For those to whom you gave their daily bread
   Rancid with God-loathed “charity,” their drink
Putrid with man-loathed “sin,” we bow our head
   Grateful, as the great hearse goes by, and think.
Yes, you have fed the flesh and starved the soul
   Of thousands of us; you have taught too well
The rich are little gods beyond control,
   Save of your big God of the heaven and hell.
We thank you.  This was pretty once, and right.
Now it wears rather thin.  My lord, good night!
 

“LIBERTY!”

 
“Liberty!”  Is that the cry, then?
   We have heard it oft of yore.
Once it had, we think, a meaning;
   Let us hear it now no more.
 
 
We have read what history tells us
   Of its heroes, martyrs too.
Doubtless they were very splendid,
   But they’re not for me and you.
 
 
There were Greeks who fought and perished,
   Won from Persians deathless graves.
Had we lived then, we’re aware that
   We’d have been those same Greeks’ slaves!
 
 
Then a Roman came who loved us;
   Cæsar gave men tongues and swords.
Crying “Liberty,” they fought him,
   Cato and his cut-throat lords.
 
 
When he’d give a broader franchise,
   Lift the mangled nations bowed,
Crying “Liberty!” they killed him,
   Brutus and his pandar crowd.
 
 
We have read what history tells us,
   O the truthful memory clings!
Tacitus, the chartered liar,
   Gloating over poisoned kings!
 
 
“Liberty!”  The stale cry echoes
   Past snug homesteads, tinsel thrones,
Over smoking fields and hovels,
   Murdered peasants’ bleaching bones.
 
 
That’s the cry that mocked us madly,
   Toiling in our living graves,
When hell-mines sent up the chorus:
   “Britons never shall be slaves!”
 
 
“Liberty!”  We care not for it!
   What we care for’s food, clothes, homes,
For our dear ones toiling, waiting
   For the time that never comes!
 

IN THE EDGWARE ROAD

(To LORD L-.)

 
Will you not buy?  She asks you, my lord, you
   Who know the points desirable in such.
She does not say that she is perfect.  True,
   She’s not too pleasant to the sight or touch.
But then – neither are you!
 
 
Her cheeks are rather fallen in; a mist
   Glazes her eyes, for all their hungry glare.
Her lips do not breathe balmy when they’re kissed.
   And yet she’s not more loathsome than, I swear,
Your grandmother at whist.
 
 
My lord, she will admit, and need not frame
   Excuses for herself, that she’s not chaste.
First a young lover had her; then she came
   From one man’s to another’s arms, with haste.
Your mother did the same.
 
 
Moreover, since she’s married, once or twice
   She’s sold herself for certain things at night,
To sell one’s body for the highest price
   Of social ease and power, all girls think right.
Your sister did it thrice.
 
 
What, you’ll not buy?  You’ll curse at her instead? —
   Her children are alone, at home, quite near.
These winter streets, so gay at nights, ’tis said,
   Have ’ticed the wanton out.  She could not hear
Her children cry for bread!
 

TO THE GIRLS OF THE UNIONS

 
Girls, we love you, and love
   Asks you to give again
That which draws it above,
   Beautiful, without stain.
 
 
  Give us weariless faith
In our Cause pure, passionate,
Dearer than life and death,
   Dear as the love that’s it!
 
 
Give to the man who turns
   Traitrous hands or forlorn
Back from the plough that burns,
   Give him pitiless scorn!
 
 
Let him know that no wife
   Would bear him a fearless child
To hate and loathe the life
   Of a leprous father defiled.
 
 
Girls, we love you, and love
   Asks you to give again
That which draws it above,
   Beautiful, without stain!
 

HAGAR

 
She went along the road,
   Her baby in her arms.
   The night and its alarms
Made deadlier her load.
 
 
Her shrunken breasts were dry;
   She felt the hunger bite.
   She lay down in the night,
She and the child, to die.
 
 
But it would wail, and wail,
   And wail.  She crept away.
   She had no word to say,
Yet still she heard the wail.
 
 
She took a jaggèd stone;
   She wished it to be dead.
   She beat it on the head;
It only gave one moan.
 
 
She has no word to say;
   She sits there in the night.
   The east sky glints with light,
And it is Christmas Day!
 

“WHY!”

 
“Why is it we toil so?
   Where go all the gains?
What do we produce for it,
   All our pangs and pains?”
 
 
Why it is we toil so,
   Is it because, like sheep,
Since our fathers sought the shears,
   We the same course keep.
 
 
Where go all the gains?  Well,
   It must be confessed,
First the landlords take the rent,
   And the masters take the rest.
 
 
What do we produce for it?
   Gentlemen! – and then
Imitation snobs who’d be
   Like the gentlemen!
 
 
“What, is it for such as these
   That we suffer thus?
Fuddle-brained and vicious fools,
   Vermin venomous?
 
 
“What, is that why on the top
   Creeps that Royal Louse,
The prince of pheasants and cigars,
   Of ballet-girls and grouse?”
 
 
Yes, that’s why, my Christian friends,
   They slave and slaughter us.
England is made a dunghill that
   Some bugs may breed and buzz.
 

A VISITOR IN THE CAMP

To Mary Robinson. ¹

 
“What, are you lost, my pretty little lady?
   This is no place for such sweet things as you.
Our bodies, rank with sweat, will make you sicken,
   And, you’ll observe, our lives are rank lives too.”
 
 
“Oh no, I am not lost!  Oh no, I’ve come here
   (And I have brought my lute, see, in my hand),
To see you, and to sing of all you suffer
   To the great world, and make it understand!”
 
 
“Well, say!  If one of those who’d robbed you thousands,
   Dropped you a sixpence in the gutter where
You lay and rotted, would you call her angel,
   For all her charming smile and dainty air?”
 
 
“Oh no, I come not thus!  Oh no, I’ve come here
   With heart indignant, pity like a flame,
To try and help you!” – “Pretty little lady,
  It will be best you go back whence you came.”
 
 
“‘Enthusiasms’ we have such little time for!
   In our rude camp we drill the whole day long.
When we return from out the serried battle,
   Come, and we’ll listen to your pretty song!”
 

“LORD LEITRIM.”

 
My Lord, at last you have it!  Now we know
Truth’s not a phrase, justice an idle show.
Your life ran red with murder, green with lust.
Blood has washed blood clean, and, in the final dust
Your carrion will be purified.  Yet, see,
Though your body perish, for your soul shall be
An immortality of infamy!
 

“ANARCHISM.”

 
’Tis not when I am here,
   In these homeless homes,
Where sin and shame and disease
   And foul death comes;
 
 
’Tis not when heart and brain
   Would be still and forget
Men and women and children
   Dragged down to the pit:
 
 
But when I hear them declaiming
   Of “liberty,” “order,” and “law,”
The husk-hearted gentleman
   And the mud-hearted bourgeois,
 
 
That a sombre hateful desire
   Burns up slow in my breast
To wreck the great guilty temple,
   And give us rest!
 

BELGRAVIA BY NIGHT

“Move On!”

 
“The foxes have holes,
And the birds of the air have nests,
But where shall the heads of the sons of men
Be laid, be laid?”
 
 
“Where the cold corpse rests,
Where the sightless moles
Burrow and yet cannot make it afraid,
Rout but cannot wake it again,
There shall the heads of the sons of men
Be laid, laid!”
 

JESUS

 
Where is poor Jesus gone?
   He sits with Dives now,
And not even the crumbs are flung
   To Lazarus below.
 
 
Where is poor Jesus gone?
   Is he with Magdalen?
He doles her one by one
   Her wages of shame!
 
 
Where is poor Jesus gone?
   The good Samaritan,
What does he there alone?
   He stabs the wounded man!