The Pilgrims of Hope and Chants for Socialists

“The Pilgrims of Hope” appeared in The Commonweal between March 1885 and July 1886, its title being decided on with the publication of the second part.  Sections I, IV, and VIII were included in Poems by the Way after the author abandoned his intention of revising it as a whole.  “To be concluded” stands at the bottom of the last instalment.

“Chants for Socialists,” consisting of songs and poems written for various occasions and collected into a penny pamphlet published by the Socialist League in 1885, is here printed entire (with the exception of “The Message of the March Wind,” pp. 3–6), although “The Day is Coming,” “The Voice of Toil,” and “All for the Cause,” were included in Poems by the Way.  “A Death Song,” which also appears there, was written for the funeral of Alfred Linnell, who died from injuries received at a Demonstration in Trafalgar Square on November 20, 1887.  It first appeared in pamphlet form, with a musical setting by Malcolm Lawson.

“May Day” [1892] and “May Day, 1894,” appeared in Justice.

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.

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?

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.”

In the midst of the bridge there we stopped and we wondered
   In London at last, and the moon going down,
All sullied and red where the mast-wood was sundered
   By the void of the night-mist, the breath of the town.

On each side lay the City, and Thames ran between it
   Dark, struggling, unheard ’neath the wheels and the feet.
A strange dream it was that we ever had seen it,
   And strange was the hope we had wandered to meet.

Was all nought but confusion?  What man and what master
   Had each of these people that hastened along?
Like a flood flowed the faces, and faster and faster
   Went the drift of the feet of the hurrying throng.

Till all these seemed but one thing, and we twain another,
   A thing frail and feeble and young and unknown;
What sign mid all these to tell foeman from brother?
   What sign of the hope in our hearts that had grown?

We went to our lodging afar from the river,
   And slept and forgot—and remembered in dreams;
And friends that I knew not I strove to deliver
   From a crowd that swept o’er us in measureless streams,

Till I woke, in good sooth, and she lay there beside me,
   Fresh, lovely in sleep; but awhile yet I lay,
For the fear of the dream-tide yet seemed to abide me
   In the cold and sad time ere the dawn of the day.

Then I went to the window, and saw down below me
   The market-wains wending adown the dim street,
And the scent of the hay and the herbs seemed to know me,
   And seek out my heart the dawn’s sorrow to meet.

They passed, and day grew, and with pitiless faces
   The dull houses stared on the prey they had trapped;
’Twas as though they had slain all the fair morning places
   Where in love and in leisure our joyance had happed.

My heart sank; I murmured, “What’s this we are doing
   In this grim net of London, this prison built stark
With the greed of the ages, our young lives pursuing
   A phantom that leads but to death in the dark?”

Day grew, and no longer was dusk with it striving,
   And now here and there a few people went by.
As an image of what was once eager and living
   Seemed the hope that had led us to live or to die.

O love, stand beside me; the sun is uprisen
   On the first day of London; and shame hath been here.
For I saw our new life like the bars of a prison,
   And hope grew a-cold, and I parleyed with fear.

Ah!  I sadden thy face, and thy grey eyes are chiding!
   Yea, but life is no longer as stories of yore;
From us from henceforth no fair words shall be hiding
   The nights of the wretched, the days of the poor.

Time was we have grieved, we have feared, we have faltered,
   For ourselves, for each other, while yet we were twain;
And no whit of the world by our sorrow was altered,
   Our faintness grieved nothing, our fear was in vain.

Now our fear and our faintness, our sorrow, our passion,
   We shall feel all henceforth as we felt it erewhile;
But now from all this the due deeds we shall fashion
   Of the eyes without blindness, the heart without guile.

Let us grieve then—and help every soul in our sorrow;
   Let us fear—and press forward where few dare to go;
Let us falter in hope—and plan deeds for the morrow,
   The world crowned with freedom, the fall of the foe.

Yea, so let our lives be! e’en such that hereafter,
   When the battle is won and the story is told,
Our pain shall be hid, and remembered our laughter,
   And our names shall be those of the bright and the bold.

Note.—This section had the following note in The Commonweal.  It is the intention of the author to follow the fortunes of the lovers who in the “Message of the March Wind” were already touched by sympathy with the cause of the people.

It was down in our far-off village that we heard of the war begun,
But none of the neighbours were in it save the squire’s thick-lipped son,
A youth and a fool and a captain, who came and went away,
And left me glad of his going.  There was little for us to say
Of the war and its why and wherefore—and we said it often enough;
The papers gave us our wisdom, and we used it up in the rough.
But I held my peace and wondered; for I thought of the folly of men,
The fair lives ruined and broken that ne’er could be mended again;
And the tale by lies bewildered, and no cause for a man to choose;
Nothing to curse or to bless—just a game to win or to lose.

But here were the streets of London—strife stalking wide in the world;
And the flag of an ancient people to the battle-breeze unfurled.
And who was helping or heeding?  The gaudy shops displayed
The toys of rich men’s folly, by blinded labour made;
And still from naught to nothing the bright-skinned horses drew
Dull men and sleek-faced women with never a deed to do;
While all about and around them the street-flood ebbed and flowed,
Worn feet, grey anxious faces, grey backs bowed ’neath the load.
Lo the sons of an ancient people!  And for this they fought and fell
In the days by fame made glorious, in the tale that singers tell.

Sick unto death was my hope, and I turned and looked on my dear,
And beheld her frightened wonder, and her grief without a tear,
And knew how her thought was mine—when, hark! o’er the hubbub and noise,
Faint and a long way off, the music’s measured voice,
And the crowd was swaying and swaying, and somehow, I knew not why,
A dream came into my heart of deliverance drawing anigh.
Then with roll and thunder of drums grew the music louder and loud,
And the whole street tumbled and surged, and cleft was the holiday crowd,
Till two walls of faces and rags lined either side of the way.
Then clamour of shouts rose upward, as bright and glittering gay
Came the voiceful brass of the band, and my heart beat fast and fast,
For the river of steel came on, and the wrath of England passed
Through the want and the woe of the town, and strange and wild was my thought,
And my clenched hands wandered about as though a weapon they sought.

War in the world abroad a thousand leagues away,
While custom’s wheel goes round and day devoureth day.
Peace at home!—what peace, while the rich man’s mill is strife,
And the poor is the grist that he grindeth, and life devoureth life?

Now sleeps the land of houses, and dead night holds the street,
And there thou liest, my baby, and sleepest soft and sweet;
My man is away for awhile, but safe and alone we lie;
And none heareth thy breath but thy mother, and the moon looking down from the sky
On the weary waste of the town, as it looked on the grass-edged road
Still warm with yesterday’s sun, when I left my old abode,
Hand in hand with my love, that night of all nights in the year;
When the river of love o’erflowed and drowned all doubt and fear,
And we two were alone in the world, and once, if never again,
We knew of the secret of earth and the tale of its labour and pain.

Lo amidst London I lift thee, and how little and light thou art,
And thou without hope or fear, thou fear and hope of my heart!
Lo here thy body beginning, O son, and thy soul and thy life;
But how will it be if thou livest, and enterest into the strife,
And in love we dwell together when the man is grown in thee,
When thy sweet speech I shall hearken, and yet ’twixt thee and me
Shall rise that wall of distance, that round each one doth grow,
And maketh it hard and bitter each other’s thought to know?
Now, therefore, while yet thou art little and hast no thought of thine own,
I will tell thee a word of the world, of the hope whence thou hast grown,

Now, to thee alone will I tell it that thy mother’s body is fair,
In the guise of the country maidens who play with the sun and the air,
Who have stood in the row of the reapers in the August afternoon,
Who have sat by the frozen water in the highday of the moon,
When the lights of the Christmas feasting were dead in the house on the hill,
And the wild geese gone to the salt marsh had left the winter still.
Yea, I am fair, my firstling; if thou couldst but remember me!
The hair that thy small hand clutcheth is a goodly sight to see;
I am true, but my face is a snare; soft and deep are my eyes,
And they seem for men’s beguiling fulfilled with the dreams of the wise.
Kind are my lips, and they look as though my soul had learned
Deep things I have never heard of.  My face and my hands are burned
By the lovely sun of the acres; three months of London-town
And thy birth-bed have bleached them indeed—“But lo, where the edge of the gown”
(So said thy father one day) “parteth the wrist white as curd
From the brown of the hands that I love, bright as the wing of a bird.”

Yet, yet the tears on my cheek!  And what is this doth move
My heart to thy heart, beloved, save the flood of yearning love?
For fair and fierce is thy father, and soft and strange are his eyes
That look on the days that shall be with the hope of the brave and the wise.
It was many a day that we laughed as over the meadows we walked,
And many a day I hearkened and the pictures came as he talked;
It was many a day that we longed, and we lingered late at eve
Ere speech from speech was sundered, and my hand his hand could leave.
Then I wept when I was alone, and I longed till the daylight came;
And down the stairs I stole, and there was our housekeeping dame
(No mother of me, the foundling) kindling the fire betimes
Ere the haymaking folk went forth to the meadows down by the limes;
All things I saw at a glance; the quickening fire-tongues leapt
Through the crackling heap of sticks, and the sweet smoke up from it crept,
And close to the very hearth the low sun flooded the floor,
And the cat and her kittens played in the sun by the open door.
The garden was fair in the morning, and there in the road he stood
Beyond the crimson daisies and the bush of southernwood.
Then side by side together through the grey-walled place we went,
And O the fear departed, and the rest and sweet content!

Now waneth the night and the moon—ah, son, it is piteous
That never again in my life shall I dare to speak to thee thus.
But sure from the wise and the simple shall the mighty come to birth;
And fair were my fate, beloved, if I be yet on the earth
When the world is awaken at last, and from mouth to mouth they tell
Of thy love and thy deeds and thy valour, and thy hope that nought can quell.

It was twenty-five years ago that I lay in my mother’s lap
New born to life, nor knowing one whit of all that should hap:
That day was I won from nothing to the world of struggle and pain,
Twenty-five years ago—and to-night am I born again.

I look and behold the days of the years that are passed away,
And my soul is full of their wealth, for oft were they blithe and gay
As the hours of bird and of beast: they have made me calm and strong
To wade the stream of confusion, the river of grief and wrong.

Wide now the world was grown, and I saw things clear and grim,
That awhile agone smiled on me from the dream-mist doubtful and dim.
I knew that the poor were poor, and had no heart or hope;
And I knew that I was nothing with the least of evils to cope;
So I thought the thoughts of a man, and I fell into bitter mood,
Wherein, except as a picture, there was nought on the earth that was good;
Till I met the woman I love, and she asked, as folk ask of the wise,
Of the root and meaning of things that she saw in the world of lies.
I told her all I knew, and the tale told lifted the load
That made me less than a man; and she set my feet on the road.

So passed the world on its ways, and weary with waiting we were.
Men ate and drank and married; no wild cry smote the air,
No great crowd ran together to greet the day of doom;
And ever more and more seemed the town like a monstrous tomb
To us, the Pilgrims of Hope, until to-night it came,
And Hope on the stones of the street is written in letters of flame.

And now the streets seem gay and the high stars glittering bright;
And for me, I sing amongst them, for my heart is full and light.
I see the deeds to be done and the day to come on the earth,
And riches vanished away and sorrow turned to mirth;
I see the city squalor and the country stupor gone.
And we a part of it all—we twain no longer alone
In the days to come of the pleasure, in the days that are of the fight—
I was born once long ago: I am born again to-night.

How near to the goal are we now, and what shall we live to behold?
Will it come a day of surprise to the best of the hopeful and bold?
Shall the sun arise some morning and see men falling to work,
Smiling and loving their lives, not fearing the ill that may lurk
In every house on their road, in the very ground that they tread?
Shall the sun see famine slain, and the fear of children dead?
Shall he look adown on men set free from the burden of care,
And the earth grown like to himself, so comely, clean and fair?
Or else will it linger and loiter, till hope deferred hath spoiled
All bloom of the life of man—yea, the day for which we have toiled?
Till our hearts be turned to stone by the griefs that we have borne,
And our loving kindness seared by love from our anguish torn.
Till our hope grow a wrathful fire, and the light of the second birth
Be a flame to burn up the weeds from the lean impoverished earth.

Not long to tell is the story, for, as I told you before,
A lawyer paid me the money which came from my father’s store.
Well, now the lawyer is dead, and a curious tangle of theft,
It seems, is what he has lived by, and none of my money is left.
So I who have worked for my pleasure now work for utter need:
In “the noble army of labour” I now am a soldier indeed.

“You are young, you belong to the class that you love,” saith the rich man’s sneer;
“Work on with your class and be thankful.”  All that I hearken to hear,
Nor heed the laughter much; have patience a little while,
I will tell you what’s in my heart, nor hide a jot by guile.
When I worked pretty much for my pleasure I really worked with a will,
It was well and workmanlike done, and my fellows knew my skill,
And deemed me one of themselves though they called me gentleman Dick,
Since they knew I had some money; but now that to work I must stick,
Or fall into utter ruin, there’s something gone, I find;
The work goes, cleared is the job, but there’s something left behind;
I take up fear with my chisel, fear lies ’twixt me and my plane,
And I wake in the merry morning to a new unwonted pain.
That’s fear: I shall live it down—and many a thing besides
Till I win the poor dulled heart which the workman’s jacket hides.
Were it not for the Hope of Hopes I know my journey’s end,
And would wish I had ne’er been born the weary way to wend.

All this hath our lawyer eaten, and to-morrow must we go
To a room near my master’s shop, in the purlieus of Soho.
No words of its shabby meanness!  But that is our prison-cell
In the jail of weary London.  Therein for us must dwell
The hope of the world that shall be, that rose a glimmering spark
As the last thin flame of our pleasure sank quavering in the dark.