The Little Birds Who Won't Sing - Page 2

and I remembered that sailors
still sing in chorus while they work, and even sing different
songs according to what part of their work they are doing.
And a little while afterwards, when my sea journey was over, the sight
of men working in the English fields reminded me again that there
are still songs for harvest and for many agricultural routines.
And I suddenly wondered why if this were so it should be
quite unknown, for any modern trade to have a ritual poetry.
How did people come to chant rude poems while pulling certain
ropes or gathering certain fruit, and why did nobody do
anything of the kind while producing any of the modern things?
Why is a modern newspaper never printed by people singing in chorus?
Why do shopmen seldom, if ever, sing?

. . . . .

If reapers sing while reaping, why should not auditors sing while
auditing and bankers while banking? If there are songs for all
the separate things that have to be done in a boat, why are there
not songs for all the separate things that have to be done in a bank?
As the train from Dover flew through the Kentish gardens,
I tried to write a few songs suitable for commercial gentlemen.
Thus, the work of bank clerks when casting up columns might begin
with a thundering chorus in praise of Simple Addition.

"Up my lads and lift the ledgers, sleep and ease are o'er.
Hear the Stars of Morning shouting: 'Two and Two are four.'
Though the creeds and realms are reeling, though the sophists roar,
Though we weep and pawn our watches, Two and Two are Four."

"There's a run upon the Bank--Stand away! For the Manager's
a crank and the Secretary drank,
and the Upper Tooting Bank
Turns to bay!
Stand close: there is a run On the Bank. Of our ship, our royal one,
let the ringing legend run,
that she fired with every gun
Ere she sank."

. . . . .

And as I came into the cloud of London I met a friend of mine
who actually is in a bank, and submitted these suggestions
in rhyme to him for use among his colleagues. But he was not
very hopeful about the matter. It was not (he assured me)
that he underrated the verses, or in any sense lamented their
lack of polish. No; it was rather, he felt, an indefinable
something in the very atmosphere of the society in which we
live that makes it spiritually difficult to sing in banks.
And I think he must be right; though the matter is very mysterious.
I may observe here that I think there must be some mistake in
the calculations of the Socialists. They put down all our distress,
not to a moral tone, but to the chaos of private enterprise.
Now, banks are private; but post-offices are Socialistic:
therefore I naturally expected that the post-office