e,
And vomit up the void your windy words
To your new Christ; who bears no whip of cords
For them that traffic in the doves of peace.

The feast of friends, the candle-fruited tree,
I have not failed to honour. And I say
It would be better for such men as we
And we be nearer Bethlehem, if we lay
Shot dead on snows scarlet for Liberty,
Dead in the daylight; upon Christmas Day.

WHEN I CAME BACK TO FLEET STREET

When I came back to Fleet Street,
Through a sunset-nook at night,
And saw the old Green Dragon
With the windows all alight,
And hailed the old Green Dragon
And the Cock I used to know,
Where all the good fellows were my friends
A little while ago.

I had been long in meadows,
And the trees took hold of me,
And the still towns in the beech-woods,
Where men were meant to be;
But old things held; the laughter,
The long unnatural night,
And all the truth the talk in hell,
And all the lies they write.

For I came back to Fleet Street,
And not in peace I came;
A cloven pride was in my heart,
And half my love was shame.
I came to fight in fairy tale,
Whose end shall no man know--
To fight the old Green Dragon
Until the Cock shall crow!

Under the broad bright windows
Of men I serve no more,
The groaning of the old great wheels
Thickened to a throttled roar;
All buried things broke upwards;
And peered from its retreat,
Ugly and silent, like an elf,
The secret of the street.

They did not break the padlocks,
Or clear the wall away.
The men in debt that drank of old
Still drink in debt to-day;
Chained to the rich by ruin,
Cheerful in chains, as then
When old unbroken Pickwick walked
Among the broken men.

Still he that dreams and rambles
Through his own elfin air,
Knows that the street's a prison,
Knows that the gates are there:
Still he that scorns or struggles,
Sees frightful and afar
All that they leave of rebels
Rot high on Temple Bar.

All that I loved and hated,
All that I shunned and knew,
Clears in broad battle lightening;
Where they, and I, and you,
Run high the barricade that breaks
The barriers of the Street,
And shout to them that shrink within,
The Prisoners of the Fleet!

THE TRUCE OF CHRISTMAS

Passionate peace is in the sky
And on the snow in silver sealed
The beasts are perfect in the field
And men seem men so suddenly
But take ten swords, and ten times ten,
And blow the bugle in prai