Swords and Plowshares/The Boer War
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THE Lion roars, who on his sea-girt isle Purrs ever gently at the Northern Bear Or Transatlantic Eagle when they dareTo beard him in his den. What stirs his bileAnd wakes his sleeping courage for the while? Is it a squirrel or a reckless hare? Such are his favorite foemen everywhere,Witness the Irrawaddy and the Nile.
Bold Dutchmen, in whose veins the blood still flows Of William, and whose daring calls to mindThe ancestral fame of your degenerate foes, Long may you wave the standard of mankind,And never be your Fatherland controlledBy bullies maddened with the thirst for gold!
IISWORD of the Irish, tempered by the sun Of torrid Hindustan and by the snows Of chill Quebec, who are the various foes,Or north or south or east or west, undoneBy your stern prowess? Do fell tyrants run Before your bloody blade, or is it those Whom Britain longs to crush that you oppose,Winning new lands of slaves as yours was won?
O ye, who never yet have fought so well For your own freedom as ye do to fixYour chains on fellow nations, hear your knell In the deep-muttered blasphemies that mixWith the last gasp of slaughtered Boers who callVengeance from hell on thralls who would enthrall.IIIWHY is Columbia silent, tho the hordes Of hungry Britain overrun the veldt— Columbia, whose soft heart was wont to meltAt every tale that history recordsOf down-trod peoples and oppressive lords, Whose sympathy lorn Kosciusko felt; While Bolivar and Kossuth, Greek and Kelt,Found her voice mightier than ten thousand swords?
Why is she deaf to cries for help to-day, Such as had rent her very soul in twainIn happier times? See how she turns away From Kruger, pleading for her aid in vain!Alas, no longer first of freedom's lands,She turns away to hide her bloody hands!