(_Lines addressed to their Master._)
If I were asked what gives me most amaze
Among your signs of mental aberration,
I should select, from several curious traits,
Your lack of commonplace imagination.
You seem to think, if once you win the day,
You justify your means; it won't much matter
What laws of man you broke to get your way,
What rules of chivalry you chose to shatter.
Is that your reading in the glass of Time?
And has your swollen head become so rotten
That you suppose success could cancel crime,
Or murder in its triumph be forgotten?
Man shall not live, O King, by bread alone,
Though spiced with blood of innocent lives for leaven;
He must have breath of honour round him blown
As vital as the very air of Heaven.
What should it serve you, though your end were won
And earth were made a mat to wipe your boot on,
If every decent race beneath the sun
Spits for contempt upon the name of Teuton?