HODGE by ROBERT SEYMOUR BRIDGES

@3After reading Maurice Hewlett's 'Song of the Plow'@1

COUNTRYMAN HODGE has gone to fight;
The girls must help to raise the grain,
Must fag in the workshops day and night,
Till Hodge come back to his home again.

His life was ever a life of toil
In snow and frost, in drought or rain;
But he is heir and son of the soil
And Hodge shall come to his own again.

The Norman oppressed him long ago,
But nought reck'd he of pity or pain,
He stuck to his work and lay full low
Till he should come to his own again.

Then Commerce swelled and drove him down;
Little he got from all her gain;
His boys went off and made the town,
But Hodge shall come to his own again.

He has waited long and foughten well
That Peace should smile and Plenty reign;
And now, as bygone riddlers tell,
Hodge shall come to his own again.

'The day when folk shall fly in the air
And skim like birds above the plain,
Then shall the plowman have his share
And Hodge will come to his own again.'

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