Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/302

118 Bear witness, Heaven, of that grim crime beneath the surgeon's knife,

The honourable gentleman deplored the loss of life;

Bear witness of those chanting choirs that burk and shirk and snigger,

No man laid hand upon the knife or finger to the trigger!

Cleared in the face of all mankind beneath the winking skies,

Like phœnixes from Phœnix Park (and what lay there) they rise!

Go shout it to the emerald seas—give word to Erin now,

Her honourable gentlemen are cleared—and this is how:—

They only paid the Moonlighter his cattle-hocking price,

They only helped the murderer with council's best advice,