’How think ye? know not your lords and masters
      What collars are meet for brawling throats? 
    Is change not mother of strange disasters? 
      Shall plague or peril be stayed by votes? 
Out of precedent and privilege and order
  Have we plucked the flower of compromise, whose root
Bears blossoms that shine from border again to border,
  And the mouths of many are fed with its temperate fruit. 
    Your masters are wiser than ye, their henchmen: 
      Your lords know surely whereof ye have need. 
    Equality?  Fools, would you fain be Frenchmen? 
      Is equity more than a word indeed?

VII.

    ’Your voices, forsooth, your most sweet voices,
      Your worthy voices, your love, your hate,
    Your choice, who know not whereof your choice is,
      What stays are these for a stable state? 
Inconstancy, blind and deaf with its own fierce babble,
  Swells ever your throats with storm of uncertain cheers: 
He leans on straws who leans on a light-souled rabble;
  His trust is frail who puts not his trust in peers.’ 
    So shrills the message whose word convinces
      Of righteousness knaves, of wisdom fools;
    That serfs may boast them because of princes,
      And the weak rejoice that the strong man rules.

VIII.

    True friends, ye people, are these, the faction
      Full-mouthed that flatters and snails and bays,
    That fawns and foams with alternate action,
      And mocks the names that it soils with praise. 
As from fraud and force their power had fast beginning,
  So by righteousness and peace it may not stand,
But by craft of state and nets of secret spinning,
  Words that weave and unweave wiles like ropes of sand
    Form, custom, and gold, and laws grown hoary,
      And strong tradition that guards the gate: 
    To these, O people, to these give glory,
      That your name among nations may be great.

IX.

  How long—­for haply not now much longer—­
    Shall fear put faith in a faithless creed,
  And shapes and shadows of truths be stronger
    In strong men’s eyes than the truth indeed? 
If freedom be not a word that dies when spoken,
  If justice be not a dream whence men must wake,
How shall not the bonds of the thraldom of old be broken,
  And right put might in the hands of them that break? 
    For clear as a tocsin from the steeple
      Is the cry gone forth along the land,
    Take heed, ye unwise among the people: 
      O ye fools, when will ye understand?

A BALLAD AT PARTING.