All Power, each Tyrant, every Mob / Whose head has grown too large / Ends by destroying its own job / And works its own discharge …
For me, this poem is a near-miss: it could have been a great didactic poem, if its prologue and epilogue hung better together with its central part. Instead, it is really three poems that are only vaguely related.
The two initial verses express the theme that “truth is stranger than fiction”. The two concluding verses are a fitting epitaph for any Napoleon or Hitler – “All Power, each Tyrant, every Mob / Whose head has grown too large / Ends by destroying its own job / And works its own discharge …”
The central part of the poem is about the arms race. It anticipated by two generations the insight of the great design-science philosopher Buckminster Fuller, that in the past most technological progress has been due to war. Not because there is anything virtuous about war, but because only when people are “taught by pain and fear” they are forced to invent new ways of doing things, and governments are obliged to spend enough on research, which ultimately creates products that improve everyday existence.
The Benefactors
Ah! What avails the classic bent And what the cultured word, Against the undoctored incident That actually occurred? And what is Art whereto we press Through paint and prose and rhyme - When nature in her nakedness Defeats us every time? It is not learning, grace nor gear, Nor easy meat and drink, But bitter pinch of pain and fear That makes creation think. When in the world's unpleasing youth Our godlike race began, The longest arm, the sharpest tooth, Gave man control of man; Till, bruised and bitten to the bone And taught by pain and fear, He learned to deal the far-off stone, And poke the long, safe spear. So tooth and nail were obsolete As means against a foe, Till, bored by uniform defeat, Some genius built the bow. Then stone and javelin proved as vain As old-time tooth and nail; Till, spurred anew by fear and pain, Man fashioned coats of mail. Then there was safety for the rich And danger for the poor, Till someone mixed a powder which Redressed the scale once more. Helmet and armour disappeared With sword and bow and pike, And, when the smoke of battle cleared, All men were armed alike.... And when ten million such were slain To please one crazy king, Man, schooled in bulk by fear and pain, Grew weary of the thing; And, at the very hour designed To enslave him past recall, His tooth-stone-arrow-gun-shy mind Turned and abolished all. All Power, each Tyrant, every Mob Whose head has grown too large, Ends by destroying its own job And works its own discharge; And Man, whose mere necessities Move all things from his path, Trembles meanwhile at their decrees, And deprecates their wrath!