Charles Mackay, English Chartist poet, 1814–1889
A reader submitted this poem to F&H via the contact page and it’s quite good. It was written by a nineteenth-century English Chartist poet named Charles Mackay. And while I would oppose Chartism as part of the mid-nineteenth-century progressive democratic attack on the hierarchical Christian social order, some of the planks in their platform had merit, and obviously this poem is superb.
No Enemies
YOU have no enemies, you say?
Alas! my friend, the boast is poor;
He who has mingled in the fray
Of duty, that the brave endure,
Must have made foes! If you have none,
Small is the work that you have done.
You’ve hit no traitor on the hip,
You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip,
You’ve never turned the wrong to right,
You’ve been a coward in the fight.
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