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