Self-help and joint effort, as BURT wisely said,
Are better by far than--that comfortless bed.
That new Little-Ease that free Labour would pack,
On a sort of plank-pillow combined with a rack.
"Come on, longs and shorts!" shouts PROCRUSTES the New,
"Law shall lend us its axe, and its rope, and its screw
I must make you all fit to my Bed standard-sized!"
Ah! Labour may well look a little surprised.
"Fit us all to _that_ cramped prison-pallet! Oh lor!
It may suit a few stumpies, but England holds more.
Might as well fit us out with fixed 'duds' from our birth.
Regardless of difference in growth, or in girth.
No! Snap-votes may be caught 'midst a Congress's roar,
But tool us all down to one gauge, mate? Oh lor!!!"
New Unionist Titan and Stentor in one,
To pose as PROCRUSTES may seem rather fun;
When it comes to the pinch of experiment, then
You may find that some millions of labouring men
Of all sorts and sizes, all callings and crafts,
The toilers by furnaces, factories, shafts,
The thrall of the mine, and the swart stithy slave,
The boys of the bench, and the sons of the wave,
Are not quite so easy to "size up" all round
To that comfortless bed where you'd have them all bound,
As the travellers luckless who fell in the way
Of the old Attic highwayman THESEUS did slay.
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