By A Reactionary

Smoke rolls in stinking, suffocating wrack
On Shakespeare’s land, turning the green one black;
The crowds that once to harvest home would come
Hope for no harvest and possess no home,
While poor old tramps that like a little ale,
In natural procession pass to gaol;
Because the world must, like the tramp, move on,
There does not seem much else that can be done.
As Lord Vangelt said in the house of Peers:
“None of us want Reaction.” (Tory cheers.)

So doubtful doctors punch and prod and prick
A man thought dead; and when there’s not a kick
Left in the corpse, no twitch or faint contraction,
The doctors say: “See. . . there is no Reaction.”
--G. K. Chesterton (1925)