Oh, now doth Death line his dead chaps with steel,
The swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs,
And now he feasts, mousing the flesh of man!
Rejoice, ye men of England, ring your bells.
King George, your King and England's, doth approach,
Commander of this hot, malicious day!
Our armour, that marched hence so silver bright,
Hither returns all gilt with German blood;
Our colours do return in those same hands
That did display them when we first marched forth;
And, like a jolly troup of huntsmen, come
Our lusty English all with purple hands,
Dyed in the slaughter of their Teuton foes.
But to their home they will no more return
Till Belgium's free and France is also free;
Then to their pale, their white-faced shore,
Whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring tides
And coops from other lands her islanders--
Even to that England, hedged in with the main,
That water-walled bulwark still secure,
Will they return and hear our thunderous cheers.
But Belgium first, unhappy, stricken land,
Which has, we know, and all too well we know,
Sluiced out her innocent soul through streams of blood,
Which blood, like sacrificing Abel's, cries,
Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth,
To us for justice and rough chastisement,
And, by the glorious worth of our descent,
Our arm shall do it, or our life be spent.
The Doctor stopped suddenly and flung his eyes over us. Naturally we
were staggered and full of amazement to think of a hard blade like
Mitchell producing such glorious stuff. Any fool could see it was
poetry of the classiest kind.
"Do you desire to hear more?" shouted the Doctor.