The Secret People Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCAA DDEEFFGGHH IIJJKKLL MMNOOOPPQRMM ONSSTUBB VVCCWW XXYYZZAA| Smile at us pay us pass us but do not quite forget | A |
| For we are the people of England that never have spoken yet | A |
| There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully | B |
| There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we | B |
| There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise | C |
| There is hunger in our bellies there is laughter in our eyes | C |
| You laugh at us and love us both mugs and eyes are wet | A |
| Only you do not know us For we have not spoken yet | A |
| - | |
| The fine French kings came over in a flutter of flags and dames | D |
| We liked their smiles and battles but we never could say their names | D |
| The blood ran red to Bosworth and the high French lords went down | E |
| There was naught but a naked people under a naked crown | E |
| And the eyes of the King's Servants turned terribly every way | F |
| And the gold of the King's Servants rose higher every day | F |
| They burnt the homes of the shaven men that had been quaint and kind | G |
| Till there was not bed in a monk's house nor food that man could find | G |
| The inns of God where no main paid that were the wall of the weak | H |
| The King's Servants ate them all And still we did not speak | H |
| - | |
| And the face of the King's Servants grew greater than the King | I |
| He tricked them and they trapped him and stood round him in a ring | I |
| The new grave lords closed round him that had eaten the abbey's fruits | J |
| And the men of the new religion with their bibles in their boots | J |
| We saw their shoulders moving to menace or discuss | K |
| And some were pure and some were vile but none took heed of us | K |
| We saw the King as they killed him and his face was proud and pale | L |
| And a few men talked of freedom while England talked of ale | L |
| - | |
| A war that we understood not came over the world and woke | M |
| Americans Frenchmen Irish but we knew not the things they spoke | M |
| They talked about rights and nature and peace and the people's reign | N |
| And the squires our masters bade us fight and never scorned us again | O |
| Weak if we be for ever could none condemn us then | O |
| Men called us serfs and drudges men knew that were were men | O |
| In foam and flame at Trafalgar on Albeura plains | P |
| We did and died like lions to keep ouselves in chains | P |
| We lay in living ruins firing and fearing not | Q |
| The strange face of the Frenchman who know for what they fought | R |
| And the man who seemed to be more than man we strained against and broke | M |
| And we broke our own right with him And still we never spoke | M |
| - | |
| Our patch of glory ended we never heard guns again | O |
| But the squire seemed struck in the saddle he was foolish as if in pain | N |
| He leaned on a staggering lawyer he clutched a cringing Jew | S |
| He was stricken it may be after all he was stricken at Waterloo | S |
| Or perhaps the shades of the shaven men whose spoil is in his house | T |
| Come back in shining shapes at last to spil his last carouse | U |
| We only know the last sad squires ride slowly towards the sea | B |
| And a new people takes the land and still it is not we | B |
| - | |
| They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords | V |
| Lords without anger and honour who dare not carry their swords | V |
| They fight by shuffling papers they have bright dead alien eyes | C |
| They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies | C |
| And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs | W |
| Their doors are shut in the evening and they know no songs | W |
| - | |
| We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet | X |
| Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street | X |
| It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first | Y |
| Our wrath come after Russia's wrath and our wrath be the worst | Y |
| It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest | Z |
| God's scorn for all men governing It may be beer is best | Z |
| But we are the people of England and we have not spoken yet | A |
| Smile at us pay us pass us But do not quite forget | A |
G. K. Chesterton
(3)
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