In Cornwall and Across the Sea :: :: University of Virginia Library

O let me tread in these degenerate days
The battle-fields where our forefathers hewed
The fashion of our greatness,—oft imbued
With torrents of red blood, I know, their bays,
With shrieks of anguish often blent their praise,
With tax and tallage, every year renewed,
The land too often groaning in the feud
Of feudal lords or kings' succession-frays.
Give us the want, the bloodshed and the tears
If we may have the glory! Poictiers
Recalls to me its triumph not its cost,
And Balaclava not the anxious fears
Of child and wife and mother far away,
But the grey chargers ploughing through a host.

264

II.

Degenerate days of statesmen not of men!
From Burnabys and Beresfords to clowns
Fresh from the plough and gamins from great towns,
In heat and peril, weariness and pain,
They prove them English of the ancient strain
Who on the fields of Picardy won crowns,
And smote the Russian on Crimean Downs,
And rode with Nelson monarchs on the main.
O happy brother-Teutons, you who have
The man, the giant of the iron will
To guard the greatness of your Fatherland,
Unmoved by hate of Gaul or wile of Sclav,
And with his thunder Party's voice to still
When it is raised against the patriot's hand.