But new was the horror of London that went on all the while That rich men played at their ease for name and fame to beguile The days of their empty lives, and praised the deeds they did, As though they had fashioned the earth and found out the sun long hid;Though some of them busied themselves from hopeless day to day With the lives of the slaves of the rich and the hell wherein they lay.
They wrought meseems as those who should make a bargain with hell, That it grow a little cooler, and thus for ever to dwell.
So passed the world on its ways, and weary with waiting we were.
Men ate and drank and married; no wild cry smote the air, No great crowd ran together to greet the day of doom;And ever more and more seemed the town like a monstrous tomb To us, the Pilgrims of Hope, until to-night it came, And Hope on the stones of the street is written in letters of flame.
This is how it befel: a workmate of mine had heard Some bitter speech in my mouth, and he took me up at the word, And said: "Come over to-morrow to our Radical spouting-place;For there, if we hear nothing new, at least we shall see a new face;He is one of those Communist chaps, and 'tis like that you two may agree."So we went, and the street was as dull and as common as aught you could see;Dull and dirty the room. Just over the chairman's chair Was a bust, a Quaker's face with nose cocked up in the air;There were common prints on the wall of the heads of the party fray, And Mazzini dark and lean amidst them gone astray.
Some thirty men we were of the kind that I knew full well, Listless, rubbed down to the type of our easy-going hell.
My heart sank down as I entered, and wearily there I sat While the chairman strove to end his maunder of this and of that.
And partly shy he seemed, and partly indeed ashamed Of the grizzled man beside him as his name to us he named.
He rose, thickset and short, and dressed in shabby blue, And even as he began it seemed as though I knew The thing he was going to say, though I never heard it before.
He spoke, were it well, were it ill, as though a message he bore, A word that he could not refrain from many a million of men.
Nor aught seemed the sordid room and the few that were listening then Save the hall of the labouring earth and the world which was to be.
Bitter to many the message, but sweet indeed unto me, Of man without a master, and earth without a strife, And every soul rejoicing in the sweet and bitter of life:
Of peace and good-will he told, and I knew that in faith he spake, But his words were my very thoughts, and I saw the battle awake, And I followed from end to end; and triumph grew in my heart As he called on each that heard him to arise and play his part In the tale of the new-told gospel, lest as slaves they should live and die.
He ceased, and I thought the hearers would rise up with one cry, And bid him straight enrol them; but they, they applauded indeed, For the man was grown full eager, and had made them hearken and heed:
But they sat and made no sign, and two of the glibber kind Stood up to jeer and to carp his fiery words to blind.
I did not listen to them, but failed not his voice to hear When he rose to answer the carpers, striving to make more clear That which was clear already; not overwell, I knew, He answered the sneers and the silence, so hot and eager he grew;But my hope full well he answered, and when he called again On men to band together lest they live and die in vain, In fear lest he should escape me, I rose ere the meeting was done, And gave him my name and my faith--and I was the only one.
He smiled as he heard the jeers, and there was a shake of the hand, He spoke like a friend long known; and lo! I was one of the band.
And now the streets seem gay and the high stars glittering bright;And for me, I sing amongst them, for my heart is full and light.
I see the deeds to be done and the day to come on the earth, And riches vanished away and sorrow turned to mirth;I see the city squalor and the country stupor gone.
And we a part of it all--we twain no longer alone In the days to come of the pleasure, in the days that are of the fight -I was born once long ago: I am born again to-night.
