Chants for Socialists | Page 8

been but a burden they scarce might abide.
Hark! the March wind again of a people is telling;
Of the life that they live there, so haggard and grim,
That if we and
our love amidst them had been dwelling
My fondness had faltered, thy beauty grown dim.
This land we have loved in our love and our leisure
For them hangs in heaven, high out of their reach;
The wide hills o'er
the sea-plain for them have no pleasure,
The grey homes of their fathers no story to teach.
The singers have sung and the builders have builded,
The painters have fashioned their tales of delight;
For what and for
whom hath the world's book been gilded,
When all is for these but the blackness of night?
How long and for what is their patience abiding?
How oft and how oft shall their story be told,
While the hope that
none seeketh in darkness is hiding
And in grief and in sorrow the world groweth old?
Come back to the inn, love, and the lights and the fire,

And the fiddler's old tune and the shuffling of feet;
For there in a
while shall be rest and desire,
And there shall the morrow's uprising be sweet.
Yet, love, as we wend the wind bloweth behind us
And beareth the last tale it telleth to-night,
How here in the
spring-tide the message shall find us;
For the hope that none seeketh is coming to light.
Like the seed of midwinter, unheeded, unperished,
Like the autumn-sown wheat 'neath the snow lying green,
Like the
love that o'ertook us, unawares and uncherished,
Like the babe 'neath thy girdle that groweth unseen,
So the hope of the people now buddeth and groweth -
Rest fadeth before it, and blindness and fear;
It biddeth us learn all
the wisdom it knoweth;
It hath found us and held us, and biddeth us hear:
For it beareth the message: "Rise up on the morrow
And go on your ways toward the doubt and the strife;
Join hope to
our hope and blend sorrow with sorrow,
And seek for men's love in the short days of life."
But lo, the old inn, and the lights and the fire,
And the fiddler's old tune and the shuffling of feet;
Soon for us shall
be quiet and rest and desire,

And to-morrow's uprising to deeds shall be sweet.
Footnotes
{1} After consulting various sources it is not clear as to whether "The
Message of the March Wind" was originally published with "Chants for
Socialists". Chants for Socialists consists of poems that Morris wrote
for various occasions and which were collected together and published
by the Socialist League in 1885. If any reader has access to the original
Chants I (David Price) would be very glad if you could clear up the
uncertainty on the exact contents.--David Price
End of Project Gutenberg Etext Chants for Socialists, by William
Morris
from http://www.dertz.in/