The crowd was growing and growing, and therewith the jeering grew;And now that the time was come for an ugly brawl I knew, When I saw how midst of the workmen some well-dressed men there came, Of the scum of the well-to-do, brutes void of pity or shame;The thief is a saint beside them. These raised a jeering noise, And our speaker quailed before it, and the hubbub drowned his voice.
Then Richard put him aside and rose at once in his place, And over the rags and the squalor beamed out his beautiful face, And his sweet voice rang through the tumult, and I think the crowd would have hushed And hearkened his manly words; but a well-dressed reptile pushed Right into the ring about us and screeched out infamies That sickened the soul to hearken; till he caught my angry eyes And my voice that cried out at him, and straight on me he turned, A foul word smote my heart and his cane on my shoulders burned.
But e'en as a kestrel stoops down Richard leapt from his stool And drave his strong right hand amidst the mouth of the fool.
Then all was mingled together, and away from him was I torn, And, hustled hither and thither, on the surging crowd was borne;But at last I felt my feet, for the crowd began to thin, And I looked about for Richard that away from thence we might win;When lo, the police amidst us, and Richard hustled along Betwixt a pair of blue-coats as the doer of all the wrong!
Little longer, friend, is the story; I scarce have seen him again;I could not get him bail despite my trouble and pain;And this morning he stood in the dock: for all that that might avail, They might just as well have dragged him at once to the destined jail.
The police had got their man and they meant to keep him there, And whatever tale was needful they had no trouble to swear.
Well, the white-haired fool on the bench was busy it seems that day, And so with the words "Two months," he swept the case away;Yet he lectured my man ere he went, but not for the riot indeed For which he was sent to prison, but for holding a dangerous creed.
"What have you got to do to preach such perilous stuff?
To take some care of yourself should find you work enough.
If you needs must preach or lecture, then hire a chapel or hall;Though indeed if you take my advice you'll just preach nothing at all, But stick to your work: you seem clever; who knows but you might rise, And become a little builder should you condescend to be wise?
For in spite of your silly sedition, the land that we live in is free, And opens a pathway to merit for you as well as for me."Ah, friend, am I grown light-headed with the lonely grief of the night, That I babble of this babble? Woe's me, how little and light Is this beginning of trouble to all that yet shall be borne -At worst but as the shower that lays but a yard of the corn Before the hailstorm cometh and flattens the field to the earth.
O for a word from my love of the hope of the second birth!
Could he clear my vision to see the sword creeping out of the sheath Inch by inch as we writhe in the toils of our living death!
Could he but strengthen my heart to know that we cannot fail;For alas, I am lonely here--helpless and feeble and frail;I am e'en as the poor of the earth, e'en they that are now alive;And where is their might and their cunning with the mighty of men to strive?
Though they that come after be strong to win the day and the crown, Ah, ever must we the deedless to the deedless dark go down, Still crying, "To-morrow, to-morrow, to-morrow yet shall be The new-born sun's arising o'er happy earth and sea" -And we not there to greet it--for to-day and its life we yearn, And where is the end of toiling and whitherward now shall we turn But to patience, ever patience, and yet and yet to bear;And yet, forlorn, unanswered as oft before to hear, Through the tales of the ancient fathers and the dreams that mock our wrong, That cry to the naked heavens, "How long, O Lord! how long?"
