So! you preach me self-reliance, <br />Emigration,- rights of man? <br />So! you bid me breathe defiance <br />As a freeborn Briton can? <br />Break the fetter, burst the shackle, <br />Let the despot find me still <br />Loose from all constraining tackle, <br />Stout of heart, and strong of will?- <br /> <br />Tell the mouse to bell the mouser, <br />Bid the harnessed jade kick out, <br />Be the lion's mean arouser <br />Till his cage he raves about! <br />Say to Lethargy, be stirring, <br />Counsel health to fever's cheek, <br />Preach cold ethics to the erring, <br />Teach gymnastics to the weak! <br /> <br />O, good sir! your weighty reason <br />Falls like feathers on a fool; <br />Want has no such leisure season <br />No such chance to go to school: <br />Bitter circumstance has bound me, <br />Everyway its serf and slave, <br />And for these free hands has found me <br />Fetters even to the grave! <br /> <br />You have wit, and time to whet it, <br />Feeling, knowledge, station, might, <br />I - my <br />bread <br />it's hard to get it, <br />All beyond is out of sight, <br />Out of hope, and out of heeding; <br />Think you that my stinted soul <br />Can, like yours, on thoughts be feeding, <br />Or be kindled like a coal? <br /> <br />What the parson weekly preaches, <br />Pretty seldom understood, <br />What the book of Nature teaches, <br />That's <br />my <br />sum of true and good: <br />Gentlefolks have nobler chances <br />Prizes all, as things of course; <br />But the poor man's Circumstances <br />Bind him down a slave perforce! <br /> <br />Emigrate? - to where I know not,- <br />Whilst I cannot break my chain; <br />Rights of man? - my Rights, they show not,- <br />And my Wrongs are shown in vain! <br />And, for what you call 'defiance,' <br />If one act, or word, or look <br />Even hinted 'Self-reliance,' <br />-I'm struck off the Bailiff's book!<br /><br />Martin Farquhar Tupper<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-dozen-ballads-about-white-slavery-iv-the-british-slave-s-reply-to-a-political-economist/
