The Lords of Their Hands assembled; from the East
and the West they drew—
Baltimore, Lille, and Essen, Brummagem, Clyde, and
Crewe.
And some were black from the furnace, and some were
brown from the soil,
And some were blue from the dye-vat; but all were
wearied of toil.
And the young King said:—“I have
found it, the road to the rest ye seek:
The strong shall wait for the weary, the hale shall
halt for the weak;
With the even tramp of an army where no man breaks
from the line,
Ye shall march to peace and plenty in the bond of
brotherhood—sign!”
The paper lay on the table, the strong heads bowed
thereby,
And a wail went up from the peoples:—“Ay,
sign—give rest, for we die!”
A hand was stretched to the goose-quill, a fist was
cramped to scrawl,
When—the laugh of a blue-eyed maiden ran
clear through the council-hall.
And each one heard Her laughing as each one saw Her
plain—
Saidie, Mimi, or Olga, Gretchen, or Mary Jane.
And the Spirit of Man that is in Him to the light
of the vision woke;
And the men drew back from the paper, as a Yankee
delegate spoke:—
“There’s a girl in Jersey City who works
on the telephone;
We’re going to hitch our horses and dig for
a house of our own,
With gas and water connections, and steam-heat through
to the top;
And, W. Hohenzollern, I guess I shall work till I
drop.”
And an English delegate thundered:—“The
weak an’ the lame be blowed!
I’ve a berth in the Sou’-West workshops,
a home in the Wandsworth Road;
And till the ‘sociation has footed my buryin’
bill,
I work for the kids an’ the missus. Pull
up? I be damned if I will!”
And over the German benches the bearded whisper ran:—
“Lager, der girls und der dollars, dey makes
or dey breaks a man.
If Schmitt haf collared der dollars, he collars der
girl deremit;
But if Schmitt bust in der pizness, we collars der
girl from Schmitt.”
They passed one resolution:—“Your
sub-committee believe
You can lighten the curse of Adam when you’ve
lightened the curse of Eve.
But till we are built like angels, with hammer and
chisel and pen,
We will work for ourself and a woman, for ever and
ever, amen.”
Now this is the tale of the Council the German Kaiser
held—
The day that they razored the Grindstone, the day
that the Cat was belled,
The day of the Figs from Thistles, the day of the
Twisted Sands,
The day that the laugh of a maiden made light of the
Lords of Their Hands.
Now Tomlinson gave up the ghost in his house in Berkeley
Square,
And a Spirit came to his bedside and gripped him by
the hair—
A Spirit gripped him by the hair and carried him far
away,
Till he heard as the roar of a rain-fed ford the roar
of the Milky Way:
Till he heard the roar of the Milky Way die down and
drone and cease,
And they came to the Gate within the Wall where Peter
holds the keys.
