Page:The Five Nations.djvu/143

Rh They were great, their views were leaded,

And their deaths were triple-headed,

So they catch the eye in running through the files

(Show as blazes in the mazes of the files);

For their "paramours and priests,"

And their gross, jack-booted feasts,

And their epoch-marking actions see the files.

Was it Bomba fled the blue Sicilian isles?

Was it Saffi a professor

Once of Oxford, brought redress or

Garibaldi? Who remembers

Forty-odd-year old Septembers?—

Only sextons paid to dig among the files

(Such as I am, born and bred among the files).

You must hack through much deposit

Ere you know for sure who was it

Came to burial with such honour in the files

(Only seven seasons back beneath the files).

"Very great our loss and grievous—

"So our best and brightest leave us,

"And it ends the Age of Giants," say the files;

All the '60—'70—'80—'90 files

(The open-minded, opportunist files—