How should I pay for one poor graven steeple Whereon you shattered what you shall not know? How should I pay you, miserable people? How should I pay you everything you owe? Unhappy, can I give you back your honour? Though I forgave, would any man forget? While all the great green land has trampled on her The treason and terror of the night we met. Not any more in vengeance or in pardon An old wife bargains for a bean that's hers. You have no word to break: no heart to harden. Ride on and prosper. You have lost your spurs. _Gilbert Keith Chesterton_ RUSSIA--AMERICA A wind in the world! The dark departs; The chains now rust that crushed men's flesh and bones, Feet tread no more the mildewed prison stones, And slavery is lifted from your hearts. A wind in the world! O Company Of darkened Russia, watching long in vain, Now shall you see the cloud of Russia's pain Go shrinking out across a summer sky. A wind in the world! Our God shall be In all the future left, no kingly doll Decked out with dreadful sceptre, steel, and stole, But walk the earth--a man, in Charity. * * * * * A wind in the world! And doubts are blown To dust along, and the old stars come forth-- Stars of a creed to Pilgrim Fathers worth A field of broken spears and flowers strown. A wind in the world! Now truancy From the true self is ended; to her part Steadfast again she moves, and from her heart A great America cries: Death to Tyranny! A wind in the world! And we have come Together, sea by sea; in all the lands Vision doth move at last, and Freedom stands With brightened wings, and smiles and beckons home! _John Galsworthy_ TO RUSSIA NEW AND FREE Land of the Martyrs--of the martyred dead And martyred living--now of noble fame! Long wert thou saddest of the nations, wed To Sorrow as the fire to the flame, Not yet relentless History had writ of Teuton shame. Thou knewest all the gloom of hope deferred. 'Twixt God and Russia wrong had built such bar Each by the other could no more be heard. Seen through the cloud, the child's familiar star, That once made Heaven near, had made it seem more far. Land of the Breaking Dawn! No more look back To that long night that nevermore can be: The sunless dungeon and the exile's track. To the world's dreams of terror let it flee. To gentle April cruel March is now antiquity. Yet--of the Past one sacred relic save: That boundary-post 'twixt Russia and Despair,-- Set where the dead might look upon his grave,-- Kissed by him with his last-breathed Russian air. Keep it to witness to the world what heroes still may dare. Land of New Hope, no more the minor key, No more the songs of exile long and lone; Thy tears henceforth be tears of memory. Sing, with the joy the joyless would have known Who for this visioned happiness so gladly gave their own.