No Enemies
by Charles Mackay
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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I love this poem. It’s a call to bravery and to stand up for what you believe! However, my first thought upon hearing it was to think of the internet and to wonder how the piece applies to an anonymous and non face-to-face memetic form of 21st century argument.
“Yes, it’s true, I, Dusty have no enemies. However, DustStorm717 has more online enemies than I can even count.”
Maybe we’ll suspend our modernity a bit and confine the poem’s admonitions to one’s face-to-face life. It’s not as though one’s anonymous internet life has no potential consequences. People regularly get doxxed by online enemies and lose their jobs, relationships, etc. But I don’t know how to quantify that so we’ll stick to the traditional view.
No Enemies is a ten line one stanza poem, with a rhyme scheme of ABABCCDDEE, and an meter of iambic tetrameter throughout. MacKay utilizes several poetic techniques, including anaphora (repetition of a word to start a line) and enjambment (a line of poetry carries its idea or thought over to the next line without a grammatical pause.)
Philosophically… I do think the poem can be misinterpreted. One should choose judiciously when and when not to dash a cup from someone’s lying face. Sometimes (perhaps most of the time) that type of action will achieve no good ends. However, if you’ve never… ever… turned the wrong to right. odds are good that you chickened out when you and the world you live in would have been better served by an act of bravery.
The TV series ‘The Crown’ featured this poem in an episode. I really like Gillian Anderson’s reading (she’s playing Margaret Thatcher) so I’ll share it below:
