Page:The Five Nations.djvu/113

Rh Then the oil-cloth with its numbers, as a banner fluttered free;

Then the grand piano cantered, on three castors, down the quay;

White, and breathing through their nostrils, silent, systematic, swift—

They removed, effaced, abolished all that man could heave or lift.

Oh, my country, bless the training that from cot to castle runs—

The pitfall of the stranger but the bulwark of thy sons—

Measured speech and ordered action, sluggish soul and unperturbed,

Till we wake our Island-Devil—nowise cool for being curbed!

When the heir of all the ages "has the honour to remain,"

When he will not hear an insult, though men make it ne'er so plain,