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.
p.
62For 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?
p.
63Why, 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.
How long shall they reproach us where crowd on
crowd they dwell,
Poor ghosts of the wicked city, the gold-crushed hungry hell?
Through squalid life they laboured, in sordid
grief they died,
Those sons of a mighty mother, those props of England’s
pride.
They are gone; there is none can undo it, nor
save our souls from the curse;
But many a million cometh, and shall they be better or worse?
It is we must answer and hasten, and open wide
the door
For the rich man’s hurrying terror, and the slow-foot hope
of the poor.
Yea, the voiceless wrath of the wretched, and
their unlearned discontent,
We must give it voice and wisdom till the waiting-tide be
spent.
Come, then, since all things call us, the
living and the dead,
And o’er the weltering tangle a glimmering light is
shed.
Come, then, let us cast off fooling, and put by
ease and rest,
For the CAUSE alone is worthy till the good days bring the
best.
p.
64Come, join in the only battle wherein no man can
fail,
Where whoso fadeth and dieth, yet his deed shall still
prevail.
Ah! come, cast off all fooling, for this, at
least, we know:
That the Dawn and the Day is coming, and forth the Banners
go.
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