nd drink,
But bitter pinch of pain and fear
That makes creation think.

When in this world's unpleasing youth
Our god-like race began,
The longest arm, the sharpest tooth,
Gave man control of man;

Till, bruised and bitten to the bone
And taught by pain and fear,
He learned to deal the far-off stone,
And poke the long, safe spear.

So tooth and nail were obsolete
As means against a foe,
Till, bored by uniform defeat,
Some genius built the bow.

Then stone and javelin proved as vain
As old-time tooth and nail,
Ere, spurred anew by fear and pain,
Man fashioned coats of mail.

Then was there safety for the rich
And danger for the poor,
Till someone mixed a powder which
Redressed the scale once more.

Helmet and armour disappeared
With sword and bow and pike,
And, when the smoke of battle cleared,
All men were armed alike....

And when ten million such were slain
To please one crazy king,
Man, schooled in bulk by fear and pain,
Grew weary of the thing;

And, at the very hour designed,
To enslave him past recall,
His tooth-stone-arrow-gun-shy mind
Turned and abolished all.

* * * * *

_All Power, each Tyrant, every Mob
Whose head has grown too large,
Ends by destroying its own job
And earns its own discharge._

_And Man, whose mere necessities
Move all things from his path,
Trembles meanwhile at their decrees,
And deprecates their wrath!_

THE DEAD KING

(EDWARD VII.)

1910

_Who in the Realm to-day lays down dear life for the sake of a land
more dear?
And, unconcerned for his own estate, toils till the last grudged
sands have run?
Let him approach. It is proven here
Our King asks nothing of any man more than Our King himself has
done._

For to him above all was Life good, above all he commanded
Her abundance full-handed.
The peculiar treasure of Kings was his for the taking:
All that men come to in dreams he inherited waking:--

His marvel of world-gathered armies--one heart and all races,
His seas 'neath his keels when his war-castles foamed to their
places;
The thundering foreshores that answered his heralded landing;
The huge lighted cit