THE HOUSE OF LORDS: AN EPITAPH

So you proscribe, and you forbid

Peace, and the trooping ghosts of hate

Enfranchise of the coffin-lid —

Your lordships’ lordship speaks too late.

That word had held when yours, for you,

Thieving and reaving smote us first:

If souls were crooked, swords were true;

They took and kept because they durst.

Still, though the pride of naked swords

Passed to a meaner, stouter hand,

You said, and it was done, my lords,

Yours was the law, and yours the land.

You clove the priest, you robbed the shrine,

With spoil of Paul and Peter fat,

Brimmed altar-cups with altar-wine

To toast your new Magnificat.

The poor, who are the lords of death,

To you were mud in foundered ways;

Your sun was red Elizabeth,

Your noon, the Dutchman's Penal days.

Hunger and halters, grey despair,

Marah of exile, coastless seas,

Baal for master-minister —

You gave, my lords, and took your ease.

And then, in Paris, patience broke;

“Who is this thing that should oppress?”

Men asked: “And shall we bear his yoke.

This idle whiff of nothingness?”

That was your lordships’ epitaph;

Still might you sell a nation's soul,

Spit on its tomb, and yawn and laugh,

But, thief to thief, the judgment stole.

This Ireland whom my lords despised —

Languid behind inverted thumbs —

She who believed and agonised

Leads on the loud, victorious drums.

Wave huddled wave, and now the last

Havocs your castle, built of sand —

We take the future, you the past,

Ours is the State, the Flag, the Land.