Read "A Call to National Service" by Thomas Hardy online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
UP and be doing, all who have a hand / To lift, a back to bend. It must not be / In times like these that vaguely linger we / To air our vaunts and hopes; and leave our land
Untended as a wild of weeds and sand. / -Say, then, "I come! " and go, O women and men / Of palace, ploughshare, easel, counter, pen; / That scareless, scathless, England still may stand.
Would years but let me stir as once I stirred / At many a dawn to take the forward track, / And with a stride plunged on to enterprize,
I now would speed like yester wind that whirred / Through yielding pines; and serve with never a slack, / So loud for promptness all around outcries!