We know him under many a name
(His odour's always much the same)--
The type that gives the warm and woolly mitten
To every cause in which a free
Briton may prove his right to be
Pro-anything-on-earth-excepting-Britain.
When from the trenches came the call,
"Make good the gaps in England's wall!"
He loathed to take our shirkers and enlist 'em;
Content to pay the deadliest price
Sooner than have to sacrifice
His passion for a voluntary system.
Not on our soldiers facing death
Under the poison's foetid breath
His dear solicitude expends its labours;
He saves his sympathy for those
Whose conscience, bleating through their nose,
Elects to leave the fighting to their neighbours.
And witness Ireland, where our best,
Eager to serve a higher quest
And in the Great Cause know the joy of battle,
Gallant and young, by traitor hands
Leagued with a foe from alien lands,
Struck down in cold blood fell like butchered cattle;--
Not for their fate his bosom bleeds,
But theirs who wrought the rebel deeds,
For them his soul reserves its chief obsession;
The murdered he can soon forget,
But, if the murderers pay their debt,
He fears it might create a bad impression!
And in that hell of hidden fire,
Whose brave conductors so inspire
With native pride the maw of Mr. DILLON,
A bloody tragedy he finds
Of which, to all instructed minds,
England (as usual) is the leading villain. O. S.
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