The Islanders

No doubt but ye are the People--your throne is above the King’s.Whoso speaks in your presence must say acceptable things:Bowing the head in worship, bending the knee in fear--Bringing the word well smoothen--such as a King should hear.

Fenced by your careful fathers, ringed by your leaden seas,Long did ye wake in quiet and long lie down at ease;Till ye said of Strife, ‘What is it?’ of the Sword, ‘It is far fromour ken’;Till ye made a sport of your shrunken hosts and a toy of your armedmen.Ye stopped your ears to the warning--ye would neither look nor heed--Ye set your leisure before their toil and your lusts above theirneed.Because of your witless learning and your beasts of warren and chase,Ye grudged your sons to their service and your fields for theircamping-place.Ye forced them glean in the highways the straw for the bricks theybrought;Ye forced them follow in byways the craft that ye never taught.Ye hindered and hampered and crippled; ye thrust out of sight andawayThose that would serve you for honour and those that served you forpay.Then were the judgments loosened; then was your shame revealed,At the hands of a little people, few but apt in the field.Yet ye were saved by a remnant (and your land’s long-suffering Star),When your strong men cheered in their millions while your striplingswent to the war.Sons of the sheltered city--unmade, unhandled, unmeet--Ye pushed them raw to the battle as ye picked them raw from thestreet.And what did ye look they should compass? War-craft learned in abreath,Knowledge unto occasion at the first far view of Death?So! And ye train your horses and the dogs ye feed and prize?How are the beasts more worthy than the souls your sacrifice?But ye said, ‘Their valour shall show them’; but ye said, ‘The end isclose.’And ye sent them comfits and pictures to help them harry your foes,And ye vaunted your fathomless power, and ye flaunted your iron pride,Ere--ye fawned on the Younger Nations for the men who could shoot andride!Then ye returned to your trinkets; then ye contented your soulsWith the flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at thegoals.Given to strong delusion, wholly believing a lie,Ye saw that the land lay fenceless, and ye let the months go byWaiting some easy wonder: hoping some saving sign--Idle--openly idle--in the lee of the forespent Line.Idle--except for your boasting--and what is your boasting worthIf ye grudge a year of service to the lordliest life on earth?Ancient, effortless, ordered, cycle on cycle set,Life so long untroubled, that ye who inherit forgetIt was not made with the mountains, it is not one with the deep.Men, not gods, devised it. Men, not gods, must keep.Men, not children, servants, or kinsfolk called from afar,But each man born in the Island broke to the matter of war.Soberly and by custom taken and trained for the same;Each man born in the Island entered at youth to the game--As it were almost cricket, not to be mastered in haste,But after trial and labour, by temperance, living chaste.As it were almost cricket--as it were even your play,Weighed and pondered and worshipped, and practised day and day.So ye shall bide sure-guarded when the restless lightnings wakeIn the womb of the blotting war-cloud, and the pallid nations quake.So, at the haggard trumpets, instant your soul shall leapForthright, accoutred, accepting--alert from the wells of sleep.So at the threat ye shall summon--so at the need ye shall sendMen, not children or servants, tempered and taught to the end;Cleansed of servile panic, slow to dread or despise,Humble because of knowledge, mighty by sacrifice.But ye say, ‘It will mar our comfort.’ Ye say, ‘It will minish ourtrade.’Do ye wait for the spattered shrapnel ere ye learn how a gun is laid?For the low, red glare to southward when the raided coast-towns burn?(Light ye shall have on that lesson, but little time to learn.)Will ye pitch some white pavilion, and lustily even the odds,With nets and hoops and mallets, with rackets and bats and rods?Will the rabbit war with your foemen--the red deer horn them for hire?Your kept cock-pheasant keep you?--he is master of many a shire.Arid, aloof, incurious, unthinking, unthanking, gelt,Will ye loose your schools to flout them till their brow-beat columnsmelt?Will ye pray them or preach them, or print them, or ballot them backfrom your shore?Will your workmen issue a mandate to bid them strike no more?Will ye rise and dethrone your rulers? (Because ye were idle both?Pride by insolence chastened? Indolence purged by sloth?)No doubt but ye are the People; who shall make you afraid?Also your gods are many; no doubt but your gods shall aid.Idols of greasy altars built for the body’s ease;Proud little brazen Baals and talking fetishes;Teraphs of sept and party and wise wood-pavement gods--These shall come down to the battle and snatch you from under therods?From the gusty, flickering gun-roll with viewless salvoes rent,And the pitted hail of the bullets that tell not whence they weresent.When ye are ringed as with iron, when ye are scourged as with whips,When the meat is yet in your belly, and the boast is yet on yourlips;When ye go forth at morning and the noon beholds you broke,Ere ye lie down at even, your remnant, under the yoke.

No doubt but ye are the People--absolute, strong, and wise;Whatever your heart has desired ye have not withheld from your eyes.On your own heads, in your own hands, the sin and the saving lies!