"For hearken,my friends and helpers;many days ago,when April was yet young,I lay there,and the heart that I had strung up to bear all things because of the fellowship of men and the blessed saints and the angels and those that are,and those that are to be,this heart,that I had strung up like a strong bow,fell into feebleness,so that I lay there a-longing for the green fields and the white-thorn bushes and the lark singing over the corn,and the talk of good fellows round the ale-house bench,and the babble of the little children,and the team on the road and the beasts afield,and all the life of earth;and I alone all the while,near my foes and afar from my friends,mocked and flouted and starved with cold and hunger;and so weak was my heart that though I longed for all these things yet I saw them not,nor knew them but as names;and I longed so sore to be gone that I chided myself that I had once done well;and I said to myself:
"Forsooth,hadst thou kept thy tongue between thy teeth thou mightest have been something,if it had been but a parson of a town,and comfortable to many a poor man;and then mightest thou have clad here and there the naked back,and filled the empty belly,and holpen many,and men would have spoken well of thee,and of thyself thou hadst thought well;and all this hast thou lost for lack of a word here and there to some great man,and a little winking of the eyes amidst murder and wrong and unruth;and now thou art nought and helpless,and the hemp for thee is sown and grown and heckled and spun,and lo there,the rope for thy gallows-tree!--all for nought,for nought.
"Forsooth,my friends,thus I thought and sorrowed in my feebleness that I had not been a traitor to the Fellowship of the Church,for e'en so evil was my foolish imagination.
"Yet,forsooth,as I fell a-pondering over all the comfort and help that I might have been and that I might have had,if I had been but a little of a trembling cur to creep and crawl before abbot and bishop and baron and bailiff,came the thought over me of the evil of the world wherewith I,John Ball,the rascal hedge-priest,had fought and striven in the Fellowship of the saints in heaven and poor men upon earth.
"Yea,forsooth,once again I saw as of old,the great treading down the little,and the strong beating down the weak,and cruel men fearing not,and kind men daring not,and wise men caring not;and the saints in heaven forbearing and yet bidding me not to forbear;forsooth,I knew once more that he who doeth well in fellowship,and because of fellowship,shall not fail though he seem to fail to-day,but in days hereafter shall he and his work yet be alive,and men be holpen by them to strive again and yet again;and yet indeed even that was little,since,forsooth,to strive was my pleasure and my life.
"So I became a man once more,and I rose up to my feet and went up and down my prison what I could for my hopples,and into my mouth came words of good cheer,even such as we to-day have sung,and stoutly I sang them,even as we now have sung them;and then did I rest me,and once more thought of those pleasant fields where I would be,and all the life of man and beast about them,and I said to myself that I should see them once more before I died,if but once it were.
"Forsooth,this was strange,that whereas before I longed for them and yet saw them not,now that my longing was slaked my vision was cleared,and I saw them as though the prison walls opened to me and I was out of Canterbury street and amidst the green meadows of April;and therewithal along with me folk that Ihave known and who are dead,and folk that are living;yea,and all those of the Fellowship on earth and in heaven;yea,and all that are here this day.Overlong were the tale to tell of them,and of the time that is gone.
"So thenceforward I wore through the days with no such faint heart,until one day the prison opened verily and in the daylight,and there were ye,my fellows,in the door--your faces glad,your hearts light with hope,and your hands heavy with wrath;then I saw and understood what was to do.Now,therefore,do ye understand it!"His voice was changed,and grew louder than loud now,as he cast his hands abroad towards that company with those last words of his;and I could feel that all shame and fear was falling from those men,and that mere fiery manhood was shining through their wonted English shamefast stubbornness,and that they were moved indeed and saw the road before them.Yet no man spoke,rather the silence of the men-folk deepened,as the sun's rays grew more level and more golden,and the swifts wheeled about shriller and louder than before.
Then again John Ball spoke and said,"In good sooth,I deem ye wot no worse than I do what is to do--and first that somewhat we shall do--since it is for him that is lonely or in prison to dream of fellowship,but for him that is of a fellowship to do and not to dream.
"And next,ye know who is the foeman,and that is the proud man,the oppressor,who scorneth fellowship,and himself is a world to himself and needeth no helper nor helpeth any,but,heeding no law,layeth law on other men because he is rich;and surely every one that is rich is such an one,nor may be other.