BISHOP BOBADIL.
["As to the course which the English Government should take in this matter, he was in favour of their acting on the principles enunciated in the Sermon on the Mount; but when it was found that a contrary course was necessary, then they must drop the sermon and have recourse to the sword."—The Bishop of Derry, in Westminster Abbey, on the subject of Mashonaland.]
Of old the bully swaggered free,
He recked not how the fight arose;
He wore his warlike panoply,
A hireling and a man of blows.
He knew no mercy, was not meek
(The meek are blessèd, said the Lord);
If one should smite him on the cheek,
He turned, but turned to draw his sword.
He trod the weaker in the mire,
Nor stayed from blood his mailèd hand,
And tramped in fury and in fire
Through many a devastated land.
I blame him not, it was his trade;
Though small his care for wrong or right,
At least he fought himself, nor stayed
At home to bid the others fight.
Long since we've placed him on the shelf;
Behold instead, his crosier drawn,
Within the sacred Minster's self
A bully blustering in lawn.
A broad-brimmed stirrer up of strife,
"I hold," he cries, "of small account
His sense who stoops to base his life
Upon the Sermon on the Mount.
"That is, if unprepared to strike.
Some help that Sermon may afford.
You suit yourselves, and, when you like,
You drop it and you draw the sword."
Go to, you loud and foolish priest,
Nor scorn the precepts you should keep.
Still is it true that, west or east,
The wolves are sometimes clothed like sheep.
And here ('twas thus in ancient days)
False prophets shame the Master still.
And congregations chant the praise
Of blatant Bishop Bobadil.