THE MASQUE OP PROGRESS.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 200, 23 April 1887, Page 3

THE MASQUE OP PROGRESS.

What are words? — a fool may bluster, churning all the empty air, Men want action— this alone may exocise the fiend despair ; What atails to rail at Progress, like some craven, poor and weak ? Rather grasp the wrong, and grasping, do redress, let actions speak ; Leave to Gaul and Slav delirium — we are made of sterner stuff ; Men who in the stress of battle never yet have cried " Enough," From the days of ancient greatness when our gallant fathers stood Steadfast, with their own great chapter, — writ in ink that glowed like blood, Till the time when Europe's freedom in the hands of England lay, And ambition's mightiest darling at her Jiat pasßod away, Shall we lose our old traditions — we who bade the slave be free — Weighing not the cost, but counting all things dross for liberty ? Shall we lose our old traditions — rave and fret like weaker men, Turning all our vaunted Progress into that which proves a bane ?—? — Like the thunder from the heavens comes a voice that answers " No ! In the path of higher manhood, where our fathers trod, we go; Nay — we stand, proud, strong, and dauntless, looking only to the right, Saying, thin is wrong, we end it ; thither lies the way to light. Seeking only Nature's progress, calm and free from brutal strife, No true son of England bids her stoop to dynamite or knife. Nature's evolutions warn us ; they come forth in stately calm, Step by step — no rude convulsion thwarts her processes with harm. We will give, if it be needful, c'en our best, our brains, our gold, Swallowed in the social chasm, like the Roman knight of old, We will face, with brow undaunted, all our misdeeds brave and true, All the tangled maze of living scanning, till c gain home clue ; Something which may guide our footsteps, teach us how aright to think. Tis not yet too late to rally, though we touch Perdition's brink. Will ye falter, brothers, Britons, — Is our lofty history done, Are we standing in the gloiming, nigh the setting of our sun ? Mark the splendour of our past. —We cannot, — nay, we will not die. Though awhile the page seems blotted, we shall cleanse it by anckby, Till again in iust/rous beauty England's stoiy thrill the world, And — the badge of Truth and Right — her mighty banner float unfurled. Rou.se ye then to thought and action, single-hearted probe the wound, Till we trace the festering plague-spot, and the cause of wrong be found Then, as in the days of old, let England's children stand as one, ! With a clarion voice proclaiming — wrong must cease and right be done. Shades of Cromwell, Hampden, nerve us, if, perchance, we need your aid, Let us stand as yo once stood, the foe at bay, all undismayed. Let us hoed the cry that riseth from out midst on every side, From the city and the hamlet, where our fellow men abide, "Come and help us — great our need ; we sicken — will ye let us die ? We, though poor, are yet your brothershelp us in our misery. What to us is all this progress, if we perish 'neath its wheels, Whilst the great world, haul and heartless, down its selfish courses reels. Give us richer fruits of Progress, teach us better lives to lead, Bid the brute depart fiom manhood, and some nobler type succeed. Can you wonder if degraded wo awake your scorn and hate — Look at home, the fault "u ill be found lying haply at your gate — If our women shameless, sexless, bear the brazened huzzy brand, And our life-seared children threaten ruin to their fatherland !" Labour, like a tiger couchant, grim and watchful, scowls at bay- — Capital lays its grip on labour — who is wrong, let wise men say — Competition hounds us onward, down an ever-narrowing stage, Muzzling enterprise, begetting death of proht — stint of wage. Shall the land which Nature gave us yield indulgence to a few, Or shall man, 'neath better systems, his lost lease of earth renew — Shall the State regard her subjects more as children, less a^ slaves, Not, as now, providing for them costly prisons, pauper graves ? Such the thoughts which gather round us, yet tho' dark the stormclouds be, Here and there the gleaming lightning gilds their vast obscurity. 'Cross the social zenith flashes our bright watchword, Brotherhood — Earnest of some higher future, richer in what makes for good. Brothers onward, dauntless, hopeful, what is dark shall pass away With tho blight of Self, which breeds it, lost in merited decay. Brace the will to higher aims and nobler action — aye be strong ; In your hands it lies to conquer, tho' perchance the strife be long. Wake — or perish in deserving fate, 'tis best that traitors die, Bearing on their brow, in warning, Cain's fell scar of infamy ; Wake — the wrongs of manhood call you ; shall those wrongs be borne for aye ? Comes a voice from out the future, thundering forth the answer "Nay."