Poem by Hilaire Belloc

The Rebel

There is a wall of which the stones
Are lies and bribes and dead men's bones.   
And wrongfully this evil wall
Denies what all men made for all,
And shamelessly this wall surrounds   
Our homesteads and our native grounds.

But I will gather and I will ride,
And I will summon a countryside,
And many a man shall hear my halloa
Who never had thought the horn to follow;   
And many a man shall ride with me
Who never had thought on earth to see   
High Justice in her armoury.

When we find them where they stand,   
A mile of men on either hand,
I mean to charge from right away
And force the flanks of their array,
And press them inward from the plains,   
And drive them clamouring down the lanes,   
And gallop and harry and have them down,   
And carry the gates and hold the town.   
Then shall I rest me from my ride
With my great anger satisfied.

Only, before I eat and drink,
When I have killed them all, I think   
That I will batter their carven names,   
And slit the pictures in their frames,   
And burn for scent their cedar door,   
And melt the gold their women wore,   
And hack their horses at the knees,   
And hew to death their timber trees,
And plough their gardens deep and through—   
And all these things I mean to do   
For fear perhaps my little son
Should break his hands, as I have done.

1. Ballade of Modest Confession
2. On the Gift of a Book to a Child
3. Sarah Byng, Who Could Not Read and Was Tossed into a Thorny Hedge by a Bull
4. The Bison
5. On Torture: A Public Singer

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