The Common Men

The great men framed the fierce decrees Embroiling State with State; They bit their thumbs across the seas In diplomatic hate; They lit the pyre whose glare and heat Make Hell itself seem cold; The flames bloomed red above the wheat, Their wild profusion wreathed the street, Then in the smoke and fiery sleet The common men took hold. Where Babel was with Bedlam freed, And wide the gates were flung; To chaos, while the anarch breed In all the world gave tongue, The common men in close array, By mountain, plain and sea, Went outward girded for the fray, On one dear quest, whate'er they pay In blood and pain, the open way To keep for Liberty. The common men who never tire, Unsightly in the mirk Of caking blood and smoke and mire, Push forward with their work; A while in foulest pits entombed, Resistless, still and slow, Burnt, broken, stifled, seeming doomed, Past where the flowers of Satan bloomed, Up gutted hills with shell-breath plumed, The stubborn armies go. Contending in the shattered sky In empyrean wars, The sons of simple men out-vie God's splendid meteors; Where'er the mills of Vulcan roared And blinked against the night, Swart shapes with sweat-washed eyes have stored The clean, lean lightnings of the Lord To be a league-long, leaping sword In this our holy fight. The small men know the burden well, The dreadful paths they know, With fear and death and torture dwell. And sup and sleep with, woe. They're riven in the shrapnel gust, But; blind and reeling, plan Another blow, a final thrust To subjugate the tyrant's lust. So, bleeding, blundering in the dust, Men fight and die for Man.