Page:A midsummer holiday and other poems (IA midsummerholiday00swin).pdf/193

 'How think ye? know not your lords and masters What collars are meet for brawling throats? Is change not mother of strange disasters? Shall plague or peril be stayed by votes? Out of precedent and privilege and order Have we plucked the flower of compromise, whose root Bears blossoms that shine from border again to border, And the months of many are fed with its temperate fruit. Your masters are wiser than ye, their henchmen: Your lords know surely whereof ye have need. Equality? Fools, would you fain be Frenchmen? Is equity more than a word indeed?