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قراءة كتاب Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 101, September 19, 1891
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 101, September 19, 1891
So shouts Labour's Lilliput—that is its voice,
And the modern PROCRUSTES thereat must rejoice.
"No giants, no dwarfs!" So say BROWNING and BURT,
But to "raise the whole race" can't be done in a spurt,
And while Nature provides us with genius and clown,
There is nought to be gained by mere levelling down.
So the plan of PROCRUSTES, my boys, will not work,
Or will benefit none save the sluggard or shirk.
Oh yes, the bold bully stands swaggering there
With the axe in his hand, and his head in the air,
Type of heedless Compulsion, the shallow of pate,
Who man's freedom would sell to a fetish of State.
Self-help and joint effort, as BURT wisely said,
Are better by far than—that comfortless bed.
That new Little-Ease that free Labour would pack,
On a sort of plank-pillow combined with a rack.
"Come on, longs and shorts!" shouts PROCRUSTES the New,
"Law shall lend us its axe, and its rope, and its screw
I must make you all fit to my Bed standard-sized!"
Ah! Labour may well look a little surprised.
"Fit us all to that cramped prison-pallet! Oh lor!
It may suit a few stumpies, but England holds more.
Might as well fit us out with fixed 'duds' from our birth.
Regardless of difference in growth, or in girth.
No! Snap-votes may be caught 'midst a Congress's roar,
But tool us all down to one gauge, mate? Oh lor!!!"
New Unionist Titan and Stentor in one,
To pose as PROCRUSTES may seem rather fun;
When it comes to the pinch of experiment, then
You may find that some millions of labouring men
Of all sorts and sizes, all callings and crafts,
The toilers by furnaces, factories, shafts,
The thrall of the mine, and the swart stithy slave,
The boys of the bench, and the sons of the wave,
Are not quite so easy to "size up" all round
To that comfortless bed where you'd have them all bound,
As the travellers luckless who fell in the way
Of the old Attic highwayman THESEUS did slay.
Though your voice may sound loud and your thews look immense,
You may fall to the THESEUS—of Free Common Sense!
As BURT says—and his eloquence moves but beguiles not—
On short cuts to Millennium Providence smiles not!
APPROPRIATE LOCATION.—"Yes," said a friend of the person they were discussing, "he is a great traveller, and tells you some of the most marvellous stories." "Where does he live?" was the question. And the very natural answer was, "Oh, in some out-and-out-lying district."