WAYS
The Way of the BritsThe Way of the Krauts
Chapter 27
The way of the Brits is a poem,
2Heroic and epic in scope,
3vFeet marching in time to a meter,
4That asked wmore than most gods can give.
5xTheir muse made them stronger, and braver, and harder,
6Than men who know nothing of rhyme:
7Each stanza was a ychallenge,
8Matched against the ztest of time.
9Each aageneration took its turn,
10And wrote its lines and died:
11For the poem was their ahonor,
12And they believed the btale it told,
13And more than this, they knew the work,
14Was made of every cword,
15And if one dforgot the scheme of verse,
16Or lost its ediscipline,
17The fempire spun upon their page,
18Would slacken and gunwind.
19And, yes, they grew tired when centuries of work,
20hDrained their pen of sweat and blood;
21iWhen the worlds they had exalted in their verse,
22Started writing jfevered lyrics of their own.
23Still, they might have lingered,
24Had they not had a son and heir,
25kThe black sheep of a thousand rhymes,
26lBut grown at last, and eager for a dare.
27O you can point with mirth at the Brits today,
28And tick off all your clichés of mdecay,
29But white men or not,
30nThey spread law through the world,
31And gave ous the gift of a dream,
32With pfreedom concealed in their lockstep refrains,
33Of dignity, duty, and brains.
34qThey made freedom scan,
35Then they passed on the rpen,
36To their son of two hundred years:
37Now, will you last as long,
38And give so much to a son?
39Or will you scribble an easy pamphlet,
40In the safety of your home,
41And ship it off to Britain,
42To slip inside their dusty tome?
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