Page:Poems (1915) G K Chesterton.djvu/99

 The wars that dyed Pall Mall and Brompton red

Passed harmless o'er that one unconscious head:

For all that little Long could understand

The rich might still be rulers of the land.

Vain are the pious arts of parenthood,

Foiled Revolution bubbled in his blood;

Until one day (the babe unborn shall rue it)

The Constitution bored him and he slew it.

If I were wise and good and rich and strong—

Fond, impious thought, if I were Walter Long—

If I could water sell like molten gold,

And make grown people do as they are told,

If over private fields and wastes as wide

As a Greek city for which heroes died,

I owned the houses and the men inside—

If all this hung on one thin thread of habit

I would not revolutionize a rabbit.

I would sit tight with all my gifts and glories,

And even preach to unconverted Tories,

That the fixed system that our land inherits,

Viewed from a certain standpoint, has its merits.

I'd guard the laws like any Radical,

And keep each precedent, however small,

However subtle, misty, dusty, dreamy,

Lest man by chance should look at me and see me;

Lest men should ask what madman made me lord

Of English ploughshares and the English sword;