Fenced by your careful fathers, ringed by your leaden seas, Long did ye wake in quiet and long lie down at ease; Till ye said of Strife, ‘What is it?’ of the Sword, ‘It is far from our ken’; Till ye made a sport of your shrunken hosts and a toy of your armed men. Ye stopped your ears to the warning--ye would neither look nor heed-- Ye set your leisure before their toil and your lusts above their need. Because of your witless learning and your beasts of warren and chase, Ye grudged your sons to their service and your fields for their camping-place. Ye forced them glean in the highways the straw for the bricks they brought; Ye forced them follow in byways the craft that ye never taught. Ye hindered and hampered and crippled; ye thrust out of sight and away Those that would serve you for honour and those that served you for pay. Then were the judgments loosened; then was your shame revealed, At the hands of a little people, few but apt in the field. Yet ye were saved by a remnant (and your land’s long-suffering Star), When your strong men cheered in their millions while your striplings went to the war. Sons of the sheltered city--unmade, unhandled, unmeet-- Ye pushed them raw to the battle as ye picked them raw from the street. And what did ye look they should compass? War-craft learned in a breath, Knowledge unto occasion at the first far view of Death? So! And ye train your horses and the dogs ye feed and prize? How are the beasts more worthy than the souls your sacrifice? But ye said, ‘Their valour shall show them’; but ye said, ‘The end is close.’ And ye sent them comfits and pictures to help them harry your foes, And ye vaunted your fathomless power, and ye flaunted your iron pride, Ere--ye fawned on the Younger Nations for the men who could shoot and ride! Then ye returned to your trinkets; then ye contented your souls With the flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at the goals. Given to strong delusion, wholly believing a lie, Ye saw that the land lay fenceless, and ye let the months go by Waiting some easy wonder: hoping some saving sign-- Idle--openly idle--in the lee of the forespent Line. Idle--except for your boasting--and what is your boasting worth If ye grudge a year of service to the lordliest life on earth? Ancient, effortless, ordered, cycle on cycle set, Life so long untroubled, that ye who inherit forget It was not made with the mountains, it is not one with the deep. Men, not gods, devised it. Men, not gods, must keep. Men, not children, servants, or kinsfolk called from afar, But each man born in the Island broke to the matter of war. Soberly and by custom taken and trained for the same; Each man born in the Island entered at youth to the game-- As it were almost cricket, not to be mastered in haste, But after trial and labour, by temperance, living chaste.