Poems of the Great War/To England: To Strike Quickly

by Maurice Henry Hewlett

TO ENGLAND: TO STRIKE QUICKLY

FIGHT, since thou must; strike quick and fierce,
    So when this tyrant for too long
Hath shook the blood out of his ears
    He may have learned the price of wrong.

Let him learn this, that the due of grief
    Of his own vice he cannot ban
By outrage of a highway thief;
    Let him remember the Corsican,

Whom England only durst not dread
    By sea or shore, but faced alone,
Nor stayed for pity of her dead
    Until the despot's day was done.

Strike, England, quickly, make an end
    Of him who seeks a deal with thee.
If he would bargain for thy friend,
    What would he trade for Liberty?

MAURICE HEWLETT