But they smile, they find a music, centred in a doleful song,
Steaming up, a lamentation, and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong_
Chanted by an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing little yearly dues of wheat, and wine, and oil;
Till they perish, and they suffer--some, 'tis whispered, down in hell
Suffer endless anguish!--
Truly--truly, great poets' words are vaster than the singers themselves
suppose!
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE LOWEST DEEP.
Sullen, disappointed, desperate, I strode along the streets that evening,
careless whither I went. The People's Cause was lost--the Charter a
laughing-stock. That the party which monopolizes wealth, rank, and, as it
is fancied, education and intelligence, should have been driven, degraded,
to appeal to brute force for self-defence--that thought gave me a savage
joy; but that it should have conquered by that last, lowest resource!--That
the few should be still stronger than the many, or the many still too
cold-hearted and coward to face the few--that sickened me.
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