Chants for Socialists | Page 7

spring-tide come gather together
That unto the Earth ye may tell all your tale.
Then this shall I promise, that I am abiding
The day of your triumph, the ending of gloom,?And no wealth that ye will then my hand shall be hiding
And the tears of the spring into roses shall bloom.
MAY DAY, 1894
Clad is the year in all her best,
The land is sweet and sheen;?Now Spring with Summer at her breast,
Goes down the meadows green.
Here are we met to welcome in
The young abounding year,?To praise what she would have us win
Ere winter draweth near.
For surely all is not in vain,
This gallant show she brings;?But seal of hope and sign of gain,
Beareth this Spring of springs.
No longer now the seasons wear
Dull, without any tale?Of how the chain the toilers bear
Is growing thin and frail.
But hope of plenty and goodwill
Flies forth from land to land,?Nor any now the voice can still
That crieth on the hand.
A little while shall Spring come back
And find the Ancient Home?Yet marred by foolish waste and lack,
And most enthralled by some.
A little while, and then at last
Shall the greetings of the year?Be blent with wonder of the past
And all the griefs that were.
A little while, and they that meet
The living year to praise,?Shall be to them as music sweet
That grief of bye-gone days.
So be we merry to our best,
Now the land is sweet and sheen,?And Spring with Summer at her breast
Goes down the meadows green.
THE MESSAGE OF THE MARCH WIND {1}
Fair now is the springtide, now earth lies beholding
With the eyes of a lover the face of the sun;?Long lasteth the daylight, and hope is enfolding
The green-growing acres with increase begun.
Now sweet, sweet it is through the land to be straying
Mid the birds and the blossoms and the beasts of the field; Love mingles with love, and no evil is weighing
On thy heart or mine, where all sorrow is healed.
From township to township, o'er down and by tillage
Far, far have we wandered and long was the day,?But now cometh eve at the end of the village,
Where over the grey wall the church riseth grey.
There is wind in the twilight; in the white road before us
The straw from the ox-yard is blowing about;?The moon's rim is rising, a star glitters o'er us,
And the vane on the spire-top is swinging in doubt.
Down there dips the highway, toward the bridge crossing over
The brook that runs on to the Thames and the sea.?Draw closer, my sweet, we are lover and lover;
This eve art thou given to gladness and me.
Shall we be glad always? Come closer and hearken:
Three fields further on, as they told me down there,?When the young moon has set, if the March sky should darken,
We might see from the hill-top the great city's glare.
Hark, the wind in the elm-boughs! From London it bloweth,
And telling of gold, and of hope and unrest;?Of power that helps not; of wisdom that knoweth,
But teacheth not aught of the worst and the best.
Of the rich men it telleth, and strange is the story
How they have, and they hanker, and grip far and wide;?And they live and they die, and the earth and its glory
Has 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