Poems

<h4><SPAN name="AN_ELECTION_ECHO_1906" id="AN_ELECTION_ECHO_1906"></SPAN>AN ELECTION ECHO 1906</h4> <p>This is their trumpet ripe and rounded,<br/> They have burnt the wheat and gathered the chaff,<br/> And we that have fought them, we that have watched them,<br/> Have we at least not cause to laugh?<br/> <br/> Never so low at least we stumbled&mdash;<br/> Dead we have been but not so dead<br/> As these that live on the life they squandered,<br/> As these that drink of the blood they shed.<br/> <br/> We never boasted the thing we blundered,<br/> We never Haunted the thing that fails,<br/> We never quailed from the living laughter,<br/> To howl to the dead who tell no tales,<br/> <br/> 'Twas another finger at least that pointed<br/> Our wasted men or our emptied bags,<br/> It was not we that sounded the trumpet<br/> In front of the triumph of wrecks and rags.<br/> <br/> Fear not these, they have made their bargain,<br/> They have counted the cost of the last of raids,<br/> They have staked their lives on the things that live not,<br/> They have burnt their house for a fire that fades.<br/> <br/> Five years ago and we might have feared them,<br/> Been drubbed by the coward and taught by the dunce;<br/> Truth may endure and be told and re-echoed,<br/> But a lie can never be young but once.<br/> <br/> Five years ago and we might have feared them;<br/> Now, when they lift the laurelled brow,<br/> There shall naught go up from our hosts assembled<br/> But a laugh like thunder. We know them now.<br/> <br/><br/></p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />