The Pilgrims of Hope
William Morris


Contents:
   The Message of the March Wind
   The Bridge and the Street
   Sending to the War
   Mother and Son
   New Birth
   The New Proletarian
   In Prison--and at Home
   The Half of Life Gone
   A New Friend
   Ready to Depart
   A Glimpse of the Coming Day
   Meeting The War-Machine
   The Story's Ending

THE BRIDGE AND THE STREET


In the midst of the bridge there we stopped and we wondered
   In London at last, and the moon going down,
All sullied and red where the mast-wood was sundered
   By the void of the night-mist, the breath of the town.

On each side lay the City, and Thames ran between it
   Dark, struggling, unheard 'neath the wheels and the feet.
A strange dream it was that we ever had seen it,
   And strange was the hope we had wandered to meet.

Was all nought but confusion?  What man and what master
   Had each of these people that hastened along?
Like a flood flowed the faces, and faster and faster
   Went the drift of the feet of the hurrying throng.

Till all these seemed but one thing, and we twain another,
   A thing frail and feeble and young and unknown;
What sign mid all these to tell foeman from brother?
   What sign of the hope in our hearts that had grown?


We went to our lodging afar from the river,
   And slept and forgot--and remembered in dreams;
And friends that I knew not I strove to deliver
   From a crowd that swept o'er us in measureless streams,

Wending whither I knew not:  till meseemed I was waking
   To the first night in London, and lay by my love,
And she worn and changed, and my very heart aching
   With a terror of soul that forbade me to move.

Till I woke, in good sooth, and she lay there beside me,
   Fresh, lovely in sleep; but awhile yet I lay,
For the fear of the dream-tide yet seemed to abide me
   In the cold and sad time ere the dawn of the day.

Then I went to the window, and saw down below me
   The market-wains wending adown the dim street,
And the scent of the hay and the herbs seemed to know me,
   And seek out my heart the dawn's sorrow to meet.

They passed, and day grew, and with pitiless faces
   The dull houses stared on the prey they had trapped;
'Twas as though they had slain all the fair morning places
   Where in love and in leisure our joyance had happed.

My heart sank; I murmured, "What's this we are doing
   In this grim net of London, this prison built stark
With the greed of the ages, our young lives pursuing
   A phantom that leads but to death in the dark?"

Day grew, and no longer was dusk with it striving,
   And now here and there a few people went by.
As an image of what was once eager and living
   Seemed the hope that had led us to live or to die.

Yet nought else seemed happy; the past and its pleasure
   Was light, and unworthy, had been and was gone;
If hope had deceived us, if hid were its treasure,
   Nought now would be left us of all life had won.


O love, stand beside me; the sun is uprisen
   On the first day of London; and shame hath been here.
For I saw our new life like the bars of a prison,
   And hope grew a-cold, and I parleyed with fear.

Ah!  I sadden thy face, and thy grey eyes are chiding!
   Yea, but life is no longer as stories of yore;
From us from henceforth no fair words shall be hiding
   The nights of the wretched, the days of the poor.

Time was we have grieved, we have feared, we have faltered,
   For ourselves, for each other, while yet we were twain;
And no whit of the world by our sorrow was altered,
   Our faintness grieved nothing, our fear was in vain.

Now our fear and our faintness, our sorrow, our passion,
   We shall feel all henceforth as we felt it erewhile;
But now from all this the due deeds we shall fashion
   Of the eyes without blindness, the heart without guile.

Let us grieve then--and help every soul in our sorrow;
   Let us fear--and press forward where few dare to go;
Let us falter in hope--and plan deeds for the morrow,
   The world crowned with freedom, the fall of the foe.

As the soldier who goes from his homestead a-weeping,
   And whose mouth yet remembers his sweetheart's embrace,
While all round about him the bullets are sweeping,
   But stern and stout-hearted dies there in his place;

Yea, so let our lives be! e'en such that hereafter,
   When the battle is won and the story is told,
Our pain shall be hid, and remembered our laughter,
   And our names shall be those of the bright and the bold.

MOTHER AND SON


Now sleeps the land of houses, and dead night holds the street,
And there thou liest, my baby, and sleepest soft and sweet;
My man is away for awhile, but safe and alone we lie;
And none heareth thy breath but thy mother, and the moon looking down
from the sky

On the weary waste of the town, as it looked on the grass-edged road
Still warm with yesterday's sun, when I left my old abode,
Hand in hand with my love, that night of all nights in the year;
When the river of love o'erflowed and drowned all doubt and fear,
And we two were alone in the world, and once, if never again,
We knew of the secret of earth and the tale of its labour and pain.

Lo amidst London I lift thee, and how little and light thou art,
And thou without hope or fear, thou fear and hope of my heart!
Lo here thy body beginning, O son, and thy soul and thy life;
But how will it be if thou livest, and enterest into the strife,
And in love we dwell together when the man is grown in thee,
When thy sweet speech I shall hearken, and yet 'twixt thee and me
Shall rise that wall of distance, that round each one doth grow,
And maketh it hard and bitter each other's thought to know?
Now, therefore, while yet thou art little and hast no thought of thine
own,
I will tell thee a word of the world, of the hope whence thou hast grown,

Of the love that once begat thee, of the sorrow that hath made
Thy little heart of hunger, and thy hands on my bosom laid.
Then mayst thou remember hereafter, as whiles when people say
All this hath happened before in the life of another day;
So mayst thou dimly remember this tale of thy mother's voice,
As oft in the calm of dawning I have heard the birds rejoice,
As oft I have heard the storm-wind go moaning through the wood,
And I knew that earth was speaking, and the mother's voice was good.

Now, to thee alone will I tell it that thy mother's body is fair,
In the guise of the country maidens who play with the sun and the air,
Who have stood in the row of the reapers in the August afternoon,
Who have sat by the frozen water in the highday of the moon,
When the lights of the Christmas feasting were dead in the house on the
hill,
And the wild geese gone to the salt marsh had left the winter still.

Yea, I am fair, my firstling; if thou couldst but remember me!
The hair that thy small hand clutcheth is a goodly sight to see;
I am true, but my face is a snare; soft and deep are my eyes,
And they seem for men's beguiling fulfilled with the dreams of the wise.

Kind are my lips, and they look as though my soul had learned
Deep things I have never heard of.  My face and my hands are burned
By the lovely sun of the acres; three months of London-town
And thy birth-bed have bleached them indeed--"But lo, where the edge of
the gown"
(So said thy father one day) "parteth the wrist white as curd
From the brown of the hands that I love, bright as the wing of a bird."

Such is thy mother, O firstling, yet strong as the maidens of old,
Whose spears and whose swords were the warders of homestead, of field and
of fold.

Oft were my feet on the highway, often they wearied the grass;
From dusk unto dusk of the summer three times in a week would I pass
To the downs from the house on the river through the waves of the
blossoming corn.

Fair then I lay down in the even, and fresh I arose on the morn,
And scarce in the noon was I weary.  Ah, son, in the days of thy strife,
If thy soul could harbour a dream of the blossom of my life!
It would be as sunlit meadows beheld from a tossing sea,
And thy soul should look on a vision of the peace that is to be.

Yet, yet the tears on my cheek!  And what is this doth move
My heart to thy heart, beloved, save the flood of yearning love?
For fair and fierce is thy father, and soft and strange are his eyes
That look on the days that shall be with the hope of the brave and the
wise.

It was many a day that we laughed as over the meadows we walked,
And many a day I hearkened and the pictures çame as he talked;
It was many a day that we longed, and we lingered late at eve
Ere speech from speech was sundered, and my hand his hand could leave.
Then I wept when I was alone, and I longed till the daylight çame;
And down the stairs I stole, and there was our housekeeping dame
(No mother of me, the foundling) kindling the fire betimes
Ere the haymaking folk went forth to the meadows down by the limes;
All things I saw at a glance; the quickening fire-tongues leapt
Through the crackling heap of sticks, and the sweet smoke up from it
crept,
And close to the very hearth the low sun flooded the floor,
And the cat and her kittens played in the sun by the open door.
The garden was fair in the morning, and there in the road he stood
Beyond the crimson daisies and the bush of southernwood.

Then side by side together through the grey-walled place we went,
And O the fear departed, and the rest and sweet content!

Son, sorrow and wisdom he taught me, and sore I grieved and learned
As we twain grew into one; and the heart within me burned
With the very hopes of his heart.  Ah, son, it is piteous,
But never again in my life shall I dare to speak to thee thus;
So may these lonely words about thee creep and cling,
These words of the lonely night in the days of our wayfaring.

Many a child of woman to-night is born in the town,
The desert of folly and wrong; and of what and whence are they grown?
Many and many an one of wont and use is born;
For a husband is taken to bed as a hat or a ribbon is worn.
Prudence begets her thousands:  "Good is a housekeeper's life,
So shall I sell my body that I may be matron and wife."
"And I shall endure foul wedlock and bear the children of need."
Some are there born of hate--many the children of greed.

"I, I too can be wedded, though thou my love hast got."
"I am fair and hard of heart, and riches shall be my lot."
And all these are the good and the happy, on whom the world dawns fair.
O son, when wilt thou learn of those that are born of despair,
As the fabled mud of the Nile that quickens under the sun
With a growth of creeping things, half dead when just begun?
E'en such is the care of Nature that man should never die,
Though she breed of the fools of the earth, and the dregs of the city
sty.

But thou, O son, O son, of very love wert born,
When our hope fulfilled bred hope, and fear was a folly outworn;
On the eve of the toil and the battle all sorrow and grief we weighed,
We hoped and we were not ashamed, we knew and we were not afraid.

Now waneth the night and the moon--ah, son, it is piteous
That never again in my life shall I dare to speak to thee thus.
But sure from the wise and the simple shall the mighty come to birth;
And fair were my fate, beloved, if I be yet on the earth
When the world is awaken at last, and from mouth to mouth they tell
Of thy love and thy deeds and thy valour, and thy hope that nought can
quell.

THE NEW PROLETARIAN


How near to the goal are we now, and what shall we live to behold?
Will it come a day of surprise to the best of the hopeful and bold?
Shall the sun arise some morning and see men falling to work,
Smiling and loving their lives, not fearing the ill that may lurk
In every house on their road, in the very ground that they tread?
Shall the sun see famine slain, and the fear of children dead?
Shall he look adown on men set free from the burden of care,
And the earth grown like to himself, so comely, clean and fair?
Or else will it linger and loiter, till hope deferred hath spoiled
All bloom of the life of man--yea, the day for which we have toiled?
Till our hearts be turned to stone by the griefs that we have borne,
And our loving kindness seared by love from our anguish torn.
Till our hope grow a wrathful fire, and the light of the second birth
Be a flame to burn up the weeds from the lean impoverished earth.

What's this?  Meseems it was but a little while ago
When the merest sparkle of hope set all my heart aglow!
The hope of the day was enough; but now 'tis the very day
That wearies my hope with longing.  What's changed or gone away?
Or what is it drags at my heart-strings?--is it aught save the coward's
fear?
In this little room where I sit is all that I hold most dear -
My love, and the love we have fashioned, my wife and the little lad.
Yet the four walls look upon us with other eyes than they had,
For indeed a thing hath happened.  Last week at my craft I worked,
Lest oft in the grey of the morning my heart should tell me I shirked;
But to-day I work for us three, lest he and she and I
In the mud of the street should draggle till we come to the workhouse or
die.

Not long to tell is the story, for, as I told you before,
A lawyer paid me the money which çame from my father's store.
Well, now the lawyer is dead, and a curious tangle of theft,
It seems, is what he has lived by, and none of my money is left.
So I who have worked for my pleasure now work for utter need:
In "the noble army of labour" I now am a soldier indeed.

"You are young, you belong to the class that you love," saith the rich
man's sneer;
"Work on with your class and be thankful."  All that I hearken to hear,
Nor heed the laughter much; have patience a little while,
I will tell you what's in my heart, nor hide a jot by guile.
When I worked pretty much for my pleasure I really worked with a will,
It was well and workmanlike done, and my fellows knew my skill,
And deemed me one of themselves though they called me gentleman Dick,
Since they knew I had some money; but now that to work I must stick,
Or fall into utter ruin, there's something gone, I find;
The work goes, cleared is the job, but there's something left behind;
I take up fear with my chisel, fear lies 'twixt me and my plane,
And I wake in the merry morning to a new unwonted pain.

That's fear:  I shall live it down--and many a thing besides
Till I win the poor dulled heart which the workman's jacket hides.
Were it not for the Hope of Hopes I know my journey's end,
And would wish I had ne'er been born the weary way to wend.

Now further, well you may think we have lived no gentleman's life,
My wife is my servant, and I am the servant of my wife,
And we make no work for each other; but country folk we were,
And she sickened sore for the grass and the breath of the fragrant air
That had made her lovely and strong; and so up herë we çame
To the northern slopes of the town to live with a country dame,
Who can talk of the field-folks' ways:  not one of the newest the house,
The woodwork worn to the bone, its panels the land of the mouse,
Its windows rattling and loose, its floors all up and down;
But this at least it was, just a cottage left in the town.

There might you sit in our parlour in the Sunday afternoon
And watch the sun through the vine-leaves and fall to dreaming that soon
You would see the grey team passing, their fetlocks wet with the brook,
Or the shining mountainous straw-load:  there the summer moon would look
Through the leaves on the lampless room, wherein we sat we twain,
All London vanished away; and the morn of the summer rain
Would waft us the scent of the hay; or the first faint yellow leaves
Would flutter adown before us and tell of the acres of sheaves.

All this hath our lawyer eaten, and to-morrow must we go
To a room near my master's shop, in the purlieus of Soho.

No words of its shabby meanness!  But that is our prison-cell
In the jail of weary London.  Therein for us must dwell
The hope of the world that shall be, that rose a glimmering spark
As the last thin flame of our pleasure sank quavering in the dark.

Again the rich man jeereth:  "The man is a coward, or worse -
He bewails his feeble pleasure; he quails before the curse
Which many a man endureth with calm and smiling face."

Nay, the man is a man, by your leave!  Or put yourself in his place,
And see if the tale reads better.  The haven of rest destroyed,
And nothing left of the life that was once so well enjoyed
But leave to live and labour, and the glimmer of hope deferred.
Now know I the cry of the poor no more as a story heard,
But rather a wordless wail forced forth from the weary heart.
Now, now when hope ariseth I shall surely know my part.


There's a little more to tell.  When those last words were said,
At least I was yet a-working, and earning daily bread.
But now all that is changed, and meseems adown the stair
That leads to the nethermost pit, man, wife and child must fare.

When I joined the Communist folk, I did what in me lay
To learn the grounds of their faith.  I read day after day
Whatever books I could handle, and heard about and about
What talk was going amongst them; and I burned up doubt after doubt,
Until it befel at last that to others I needs must speak
(Indeed, they pressed me to that while yet I was weaker than weak).

So I began the business, and in street-corners I spake
To knots of men.  Indeed, that made my very heart ache,
So hopeless it seemed; for some stood by like men of wood;
And some, though fain to listen, but a few words understood;
And some but hooted and jeered:  but whiles across some I çame
Who were keen and eager to hear; as in dry flax the flame
So the quick thought flickered amongst them:  and that indeed was a
feast.

So about the streets I went, and the work on my hands increased;
And to say the very truth betwixt the smooth and the rough
It was work and hope went with it, and I liked it well enough:
Nor made I any secret of all that I was at
But daily talked in our shop and spoke of this and of that.

Then vanished my money away, and like a fool I told
Some one or two of the loss.  Did that make the master bold?
Before I was one of his lot, and as queer as my head might be
I might do pretty much as I liked.  Well now he sent for me
And spoke out in very words my thought of the rich man's jeer:
"Well, sir, you have got your wish, as far as I can hear,
And are now no thief of labour, but an honest working man:
Now I'll give you a word of warning:  stay in it as long as you can,
This working lot that you like so:  you're pretty well off as you are.

So take another warning:  I have thought you went too far,
And now I am quite sure of it; so make an end of your talk
At once and for ever henceforth, or out of my shop you walk;
There are plenty of men to be had who are quite as good as you.
And mind you, anywhere else you'll scarce get work to do,
Unless you rule your tongue;--good morning; stick to your work."

The hot blood rose to my eyes, somewhere a thought did lurk
To finish both him and the job:  but I knew now what I was,
And out of the little office in helpless rage did I pass
And went to my work, a SLAVE, for the sake of my child and my sweet.
Did men look for the brand on my forehead that eve as I went through the
street?

And what was the end after all?  Why, one of my shopmates heard
My next night's speech in the street, and passed on some bitter word,
And that week çame a word with my money:  "You needn't come again."
And the shame of my four days' silence had been but grief in vain.

Well I see the days before me:  this time we shall not die
Nor go to the workhouse at once:  I shall get work by-and-by,
And shall work in fear at first, and at last forget my fear,
And drudge on from day to day, since it seems that I hold life dear.
'Tis the lot of many millions!  Yet if half of those millions knew
The hope that my heart hath learned, we should find a deed to do,
And who or what should withstand us?  And I, e'en I might live
To know the love of my fellows and the gifts that earth can give.

THE HALF OF LIFE GONE


The days have slain the days, and the seasons have gone by
And brought me the summer again; and here on the grass I lie
As erst I lay and was glad ere I meddled with right and with wrong.
Wide lies the mead as of old, and the river is creeping along
By the side of the elm-clad bank that turns its weedy stream,
And grey o'er its hither lip the quivering rushes gleam.

There is work in the mead as of old; they are eager at winning the hay,
While every sun sets bright and begets a fairer day.
The forks shine white in the sun round the yellow red-wheeled wain,
Where the mountain of hay grows fast; and now from out of the lane
Comes the ox-team drawing another, comes the bailiff and the beer,
And thump, thump, goes the farmer's nag o'er the narrow bridge of the
weir.

High up and light are the clouds, and though the swallows flit
So high o'er the sunlit earth, they are well a part of it,
And so, though high over them, are the wings of the wandering herne;
In measureless depths above him doth the fair sky quiver and burn;
The dear sun floods the land as the morning falls toward noon,
And a little wind is awake in the best of the latter June.

They are busy winning the hay, and the life and the picture they make,
If I were as once I was, I should deem it made for my sake;
For here if one need not work is a place for happy rest,
While one's thought wends over the world, north, south, and east and
west.
There are the men and the maids, and the wives and the gaffers grey
Of the fields I know so well, and but little changed are they
Since I was a lad amongst them; and yet how great is the change!
Strange are they grown unto me; yea, I to myself am strange.

Their talk and their laughter mingling with the music of the meads
Has now no meaning to me to help or to hinder my needs,
So far from them have I drifted.  And yet amidst them goes
A part of myself, my boy, and of pleasure and pain he knows,
And deems it something strange when he is other than glad.
Lo now! the woman that stoops and kisses the face of the lad,
And puts a rake in his hand and laughs in his laughing face -
Whose is the voice that laughs in the old familiar place?
Whose should it be but my love's, if my love were yet on the earth?
Could she refrain from the fields where my joy and her joy had birth,
When I was there and her child, on the grass that knew her feet
Mid the flowers that led her on when the summer eve was sweet?

No, no, it is she no longer; never again can she come
And behold the hay-wains creeping o'er the meadows of her home;
No more can she kiss her son or put the rake in his hand
That she handled a while agone in the midst of the haymaking band.

Her laughter is gone and her life; there is no such thing on the earth,
No share for me then in the stir, no share in the hurry and mirth.

Nay, let me look and believe that all these will vanish away,
At least when the night has fallen, and that she will be there mid the
hay,
Happy and weary with work, waiting and longing for love.

There will she be, as of old, when the great moon hung above,
And lightless and dead was the village, and nought but the weir was
awake;
There will she rise to meet me, and my hands will she hasten to take,
And thence shall we wander away, and over the ancient bridge
By many a rose-hung hedgerow, till we reach the sun-burnt ridge
And the great trench digged by the Romans:  there then awhile shall we
stand,
To watch the dawn come creeping o'er the fragrant lovely land,
Till all the world awaketh, and draws us down, we twain,
To the deeds of the field and the fold and the merry summer's gain.

Ah thus, only thus shall I see her, in dreams of the day or the night,
When my soul is beguiled of its sorrow to remember past delight.
She is gone.  She was and she is not; there is no such thing on the earth
But e'en as a picture painted; and for me there is void and dearth
That I cannot name or measure.
                  Yet for me and all these she died,
E'en as she lived for awhile, that the better day might betide.
Therefore I live, and I shall live till the last day's work shall fail.

Have patience now but a little and I will tell you the tale
Of how and why she died, and why I am weak and worn,
And have wandered away to the meadows and the place where I was born:
But here and to-day I cannot; for ever my thought will stray
To that hope fulfilled for a little and the bliss of the earlier day.

Of the great world's hope and anguish to-day I scarce can think:
Like a ghost from the lives of the living and their earthly deeds I
shrink.

I will go adown by the water and over the ancient bridge,
And wend in our footsteps of old till I come to the sun-burnt ridge,
And the great trench digged by the Romans; and thence awhile will I gaze,
And see three teeming counties stretch out till they fade in the haze;
And in all the dwellings of man that thence mine eyes shall see,
What man as hapless as I am beneath the sun shall be?

O fool, what words are these?  Thou hast a sorrow to nurse,
And thou hast been bold and happy; but these, if they utter a curse,
No sting it has and no meaning--it is empty sound on the air.
Thy life is full of mourning, and theirs so empty and bare
That they have no words of complaining; nor so happy have they been
That they may measure sorrow or tell what grief may mean.
And thou, thou hast deeds to do, and toil to meet thee soon;
Depart and ponder on these through the sun-worn afternoon.

READY TO DEPART


I said of my friend new-found that at first he saw not my lair;
Yet he and I and my wife were together here and there;
And at last as my work increased and my den to a dwelling grew,
He çame there often enough, and yet more together we drew.
Then çame a change in the man; for a month he kept away,
Then çame again and was with us for a fortnight every day,
But often he sat there silent, which was little his wont with us.

And at first I had no inkling of what constrained him thus;
I might have thought that he faltered, but now and again there çame,
When we spoke of the Cause and its doings, a flash of his eager flame,
And he seemed himself for a while; then the brightness would fade away,
And he gloomed and shrank from my eyes.

         Thus passed day after day,
And grieved I grew, and I pondered:  till at last one eve we sat
In the fire-lit room together, and talked of this and that,
But chiefly indeed of the war and what would come of it;
For Paris drew near to its fall, and wild hopes 'gan to flit
Amidst us Communist folk; and we talked of what might be done
When the Germans had gone their ways and the two were left alone,
Betrayers and betrayed in war-worn wasted Francë.

As I spoke the word "betrayed," my eyes met his in a glance,
And swiftly he turned away; then back with a steady gaze
He turned on me; and it seemed as when a sword-point plays
Round the sword in a battle's beginning and the coming on of strife.
For I knew though he looked on me, he saw not me, but my wife:
And he reddened up to the brow, and the tumult of the blood
Nigh blinded my eyes for a while, that I scarce saw bad or good,
Till I knew that he was arisen and had gone without a word.

Then I turned about unto her, and a quivering voice I heard
Like music without a meaning, and twice I heard my name.

"O Richard, Richard!" she said, and her arms about me çame,
And her tears and the lips that I loved were on my face once more.
A while I clung to her body, and longing sweet and sore
Beguiled my heart of its sorrow; then we sundered and sore she wept,
While fair pictures of days departed about my sad heart crept,
And mazed I felt and weary.  But we sat apart again,
Not speaking, while between us was the sharp and bitter pain
As the sword 'twixt the lovers bewildered in the fruitless marriage bed.
Yet a while, and we spoke together, and I scarce knew what I said,
But it was not wrath or reproaching, or the chill of love-born hate;
For belike around and about us, we felt the brooding fate.

We were gentle and kind together, and if any had seen us so,
They had said, "These two are one in the face of all trouble and woe."
But indeed as a wedded couple we shrank from the eyes of men,
As we dwelt together and pondered on the days that come not again.

Days passed and we dwelt together; nor Arthur çame for awhile;
Gravely it was and sadly, and with no greeting smile,
That we twain met at our meetings:  but no growth of hate was yet,
Though my heart at first would be sinking as our thoughts and our eyes
they met:
And when he spake amidst us and as one we two agreed,
And I knew of his faith and his wisdom, then sore was my heart indeed.
We shrank from meeting alone:  for the words we had to say
Our thoughts would nowise fashion--not yet for many a day.

Unhappy days of all days!  Yet O might they come again!
So sore as my longing returneth to their trouble and sorrow and pain!

But time passed, and once we were sitting, my wife and I in our room,
And it was in the London twilight and the February gloom,
When there çame a knock, and he entered all pale, though bright were his
eyes,
And I knew that something had happened, and my heart to my mouth did
arise.

"It is over," he said "--and beginning; for Paris has fallen at last,
And who knows what next shall happen after all that has happened and
passed?
There now may we all be wanted."
         I took up the word:  "Well then
Let us go, we three together, and there to die like men."

"Nay," he said, "to live and be happy like men."  Then he flushed up red,
And she no less as she hearkened, as one thought through their bodies had
sped.

Then I reached out my hand unto him, and I kissed her once on the brow,
But no word craving forgiveness, and no word of pardon e'en now,
Our minds for our mouths might fashion.

         In the February gloom
And into the dark we sat planning, and there was I in the room,
And in speech I gave and I took; but yet alone and apart
In the fields where I once was a youngling whiles wandered the thoughts
of my heart,
And whiles in the unseen Paris, and the streets made ready for war.

Night grew and we lit the candles, and we drew together more,
And whiles we differed a little as we settled what to do,
And my soul was cleared of confusion as nigher the deed-time drew.

Well, I took my child into the country, as we had settled there,
And gave him o'er to be cherished by a kindly woman's care,
A friend of my mother's, but younger:  and for Arthur, I let him give
His money, as mine was but little, that the boy might flourish and live,
Lest we three, or I and Arthur, should perish in tumult and war,
And at least the face of his father he should look on never more.

You cry out shame on my honour?  But yet remember again
That a man in my boy was growing; must my passing pride and pain
Undo the manhood within him and his days and their doings blight?
So I thrust my pride away, and I did what I deemed was right,
And left him down in our country.

         And well may you think indeed
How my sad heart swelled at departing from the peace of river and mead,
But I held all sternly aback and again to the town did I pass.

And as alone I journeyed, this was ever in my heart:
"They may die; they may live and be happy; but for me I know my part,
In Paris to do my utmost, and there in Paris to die!"
And I said, "The day of the deeds and the day of deliverance is nigh."