GRAVE this deep in your hearts, <br />Forget not the tale of the past! <br />Never, never believe <br />That any will help you, or can, <br />Saving only Yourselves! <br />What have the Gentlemen done, <br />Peerless haters of wrong, <br />Byrons and Shelleys, what? <br />They stand great famous Names, <br />Demi-gods to their own, <br />Shadows far off, alien <br />To us and ours for ever. <br />Those who love them and hate <br />The crime, the injustice they hated, <br />What can they do but shout, <br />Win a name from our woes, <br />And leave us just as we were? <br />No, but resolutely turned, <br />Our wants, our desires made clear, <br />And clear the means that shall win them, <br />Drill and drill and drill! <br />Then when the day is come, <br />When the royal battleflag's up, <br />When blood has been spilled in vain <br />In timid half-hearted war, <br />Then let the Cromwell rise, <br />The simple, the true-souled Man; <br />Then let Grant come forth, <br />The calm, the determined Comrade, <br />But deep in their hearts one hate, <br />Deep in their souls one thought, <br />To bring the Iniquity low, <br />To make the People free! <br />Ah, for such as these, <br />We with the same heart-hate, <br />We with the same soul-thought, <br />Will fall to our destined places <br />In the ranks of the Great New Model, <br />In the Army that sees ahead <br />Marston, Naseby, Whitehall, The Wilderness, Petersburg — yes, <br />But beyond the blood and the smoke, <br />Beyond the struggle and death, <br />The Union victorious safe, <br />The Commonwealth glorious free!<br /><br />Francis William Lauderdale Adams<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-the-sons-of-labour/
