Skip to main content

The Secret People

The Secret People

by G.K.Chesterton

Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget;
For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.
There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully,
There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we.
There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise.
There is hunger in our bellies, there is laughter in our eyes;
You laugh at us and love us, both mugs and eyes are wet:
Only you do not know us. For we have not spoken yet.

The fine French kings came over in a flutter of flags and dames.
We liked their smiles and battles, but we never could say their names.
The blood ran red to Bosworth and the high French lords went down;
There was naught but a naked people under a naked crown.
And the eyes of the King's Servants turned terribly every way,
And the gold of the King's Servants rose higher every day.
They burnt the homes of the shaven men, that had been quaint and kind,
Till there was no bed in a monk's house, nor food that man could find.
The inns of God where no man paid, that were the wall of the weak.
The King's Servants ate them all. And still we did not speak.

And the face of the King's Servants grew greater than the King:
He tricked them, and they trapped him, and stood round him in a ring.
The new grave lords closed round him, that had eaten the abbey's fruits,
And the men of the new religion, with their bibles in their boots,
We saw their shoulders moving, to menace or discuss,
And some were pure and some were vile; but none took heed of us.
We saw the King as they killed him, and his face was proud and pale;
And a few men talked of freedom, while England talked of ale.

A war that we understood not came over the world and woke
Americans, Frenchmen, Irish; but we knew not the things they spoke.
They talked about rights and nature and peace and the people's reign:
And the squires, our masters, bade us fight; and scorned us never again.
Weak if we be for ever, could none condemn us then;
Men called us serfs and drudges; men knew that we were men.
In foam and flame at Trafalgar, on Albuera plains,
We did and died like lions, to keep ourselves in chains,
We lay in living ruins; firing and fearing not
The strange fierce face of the Frenchmen who knew for what they fought,
And the man who seemed to be more than a man we strained against and broke;
And we broke our own rights with him. And still we never spoke.

Our patch of glory ended; we never heard guns again.
But the squire seemed struck in the saddle; he was foolish, as if in pain,
He leaned on a staggering lawyer, he clutched a cringing Jew,
He was stricken; it may be, after all, he was stricken at Waterloo.
Or perhaps the shades of the shaven men, whose spoil is in his house,
Come back in shining shapes at last to spoil his last carouse:
We only know the last sad squires rode slowly towards the sea,
And a new people takes the land: and still it is not we.

They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger or honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs.

We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,
Our wrath come after Russia's wrath and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest
God's scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.

[home] Up to G.K.Chesterton's Works on the Web.
Last modified: 12th March, 1999
Martin Ward, De Montfort University, Leicester.
Email: martin@gkc.org.uk

Popular Posts

PETITION: Government to indicate countries of the UK are open to accede to the US

Sign the Petition A Dialogue on the UK's Accession to the United States Executive Summary This initiative seeks to foster a formal dialogue regarding the potential accession of the countries of the United Kingdom , to the United States , as individual states.  Simply put, this petition is asking the government to start a conversation about the benefits of leaving the UK and joining the United States. The objective is to evaluate the benefits to citizens and stakeholders, encouraging a constructive discourse on the political, economic, and social implications of such a union. If Wales , Northern Ireland , Scotland , or  England were to leave the United Kingdom, it would end their system of constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy . Instead, if they joined the United States as separate states, they would govern themselves under the U.S. federal system while receiving its protection. This proposal recognises that immediate change is unlikely but urges a serious con...
Read more

Who Said There Was Anything Wrong With a Worldview?

Who Said There Was Anything Wrong With a Worldview? I didn't. But it's when I believe my worldview, is truth, that I become violent without realising it. This is extremely hard for people to accept as possible. The resistance to seeing it and the temptation to escape from looking, is built into its foundations. So, I never said worldviews are bad for us. I did say that when I believe my worldview is a fact, then "I" become root cause of the worlds problems. Thought creates an image of the world. Then thought worships the image that thought created. I am scared of death. So I create an existential worldview about immortality - an image. This can be a God, a political ideology, scientific religiosity, atheism, planet saving activism, anything which my fear of death can hide behind. So if I do 'good' through this image I created, I will ultimately get a 'seat on the right hand side of God' , or whatever the image I created has defined as heaven. Then I w...
Read more

Facing Draco, Mining Dorado

This is a proposal to show how the 18.6 year real estate cycle is a hang over from times where the mechanics of the lunar month were used by high priests of the time to forecast ancient agricultural cycles - what we would today call a business cycle culminating in a financial crisis or a great recession. The 18.6 year period is governed by the intersection of lunar and solar eclipses. It is known scientifically as the Saros Cycle. Where all 3 harmonics of the orbit of the moon coincide once every 18.6 years. The ancient scholars knew this. And the politicians of the time used it to signal the day when the economy would be deliberately reset by fiat. This reset was necessary because this period was about how long the people of nations could abuse the economy before it was too late to recover on its own and much worse effects would have emerged. So it was the wisdom of the leadership of the time. As the aeons went by, the meaning and rationale of this policy became normalised - people an...
Read more