labour is consumed, their bodies rot unnamed, and their habitations are swept away.  They do not tell their public secret, and at the most their existence is recorded in the registers of the parish, the workhouse, or the gaol.  But from time to time men have arisen with the heart to see and the gift of speech, and in the years when the oppression of the landlords was at its worst a few such men arose.  We do not listen to them now, for no one cares to hear of misery.  And we do not listen, because most of them wrote in verse, and verse is not liked unless it tells of love or beauty or the sticky pathos of drawing-room songs.  But it so happens that two of the first who saw and spoke also sang of love and beauty with a power and sweetness that compel us to listen still.  And so, in turning their well-known pages, we suddenly come upon things called “The Masque of Anarchy” or “The Age of Bronze,” and, with a moment’s wonder what they are all about, we pass on to “The Sensitive Plant,” or “When We Two Parted.”  As we pass, we may just glance at the verses and read: 

  “What is Freedom?—­ye can tell
  That which slavery is, too well—­
  For its very name has grown
  To an echo of your own. 
  ’Tis to work and have such pay
  As just keeps life from day to day
  In your limbs....

  ’Tis to see your children weak
  With their mothers pine and peak,
  When the winter winds are bleak—­
  They are dying whilst I speak.”

Or, turning on, perhaps, in search of the “Ode to the West Wind,” we casually notice the song beginning: 

  “Men of England, wherefore plough
  For the lords who lay you low? 
  Wherefore weave with toil and care
  The rich robes your tyrants wear?

  Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save,
  From the cradle to the grave,
  Those ungrateful drones who would
  Drain your sweat—­nay, drink your blood?”

And so to the conclusion: 

  “With plough and spade, and hoe and loom,
  Trace your grave, and build your tomb,
  And weave your winding-sheet, till fair
  England be your sepulchre.”

Or else, in looking once more for that exquisite scene between Haidee and Don Juan on the beach, we fall unawares upon these lines: 

“Year after year they voted cent. per cent.,
Blood, sweat, and tear-wrung millions—­why? for rent! 
They roared, they dined, they drank, they swore they meant
To die for England—­why then live?—­for rent!

* * * * *

And will they not repay the treasures lent? 
No; down with everything, and up with rent! 
Their good, ill, health, wealth, joy, or discontent,
Being, end, aim, religion—­rent, rent, rent!”