Page:Two Mock Epics (Hanuman and Tantum Religio), Lyrics, Post Meridian Verse, The Turret Captain's Toast and other Verses.pdf/92

 And shall we don the modern creed

Of dull indifference and greed

Where once, in hosts, the grey rats fell

And thousands thronged the gates to hell?

Nay! let Calabria’s sturdy faith,

Who burnt her heretics as late

As the proud year of fifty-eight,

Recal us to the stake and flame

And paint our recreant cheeks with shame.

On! brothers! on!” the haggard wraith

Bounced from his stall, “to the attack!

On! brothers! on! with fire and rack;

And damned be he that first holds back.”

As thus he spake, the throng, entranced,

Deployed, and like a wall advanced,

Or bellying surf, all arm and leg,

Such as when o’er thy virgin scrub,

O Michigan or Winnipeg!

The proud red Indians whoop and dance,

Blood-thirstier than thy weazels, France!

And all converge upon the tub

To sweep it, with the man of grace

Upon it, off this planet’s face,

Or, if a star-were goal too far,

At least, from off the market-place.

In Spagna’s happy lands, we know,

Some century or more ago,

A popish genius once contrived

A cage for heretics, derived

From his own vivid sense of hell.

It was a toy to fill with joy

The soul of every Jesuit shrived: