THE GREAT PETARD.
(Being some further reliable information about the enormous siege gun which is to shell us from Calais.)
This is the tale of the Master Hun
And how, on thinking it over,
He bade his henchmen build him a gun
With a belly as huge as the Heidelberg Tun
To batter the cliffs of Dover.
See how the Uhlans' lances toss!
As a mother her child they love it;
Guarding it well from scathe and loss
They have stamped its side with a big Red Cross,
And the white flag waves above it.
First it was cast in Essen town;
Junkers in gay apparel
Flocked to sample its high renown,
And a dozen or more, they say, sat down
To dinner inside its barrel.
Fair and free did the Rhine wine flow
Till the face of every glutton
Shone with a patriot's after-glow,
And then they retired a mile or so
And the War Lord pressed the button.
Hoch! The howitzer stood the test,
Belching like fifty craters,
And (this is perhaps the cream of the jest)
There was more than metal inside its chest,
For they hadn't removed the waiters.
Now it has come on armoured trains
To the further side of the Channel;
Prayers are said in a hundred fanes
For its godlike soul, and whenever it rains
They muffle its throat with flannel.
Strange indeed is the cry of its shells,
Like a pack of hounds in full wail,
Like the roar of a mountain stream that swells
Or like anything else from a peal of bells
To the bark of a wounded bull-whale.
But the worst of it is that when—and if—
It begins its work of slaughter
It will possibly harm the Kentish cliff,
But it's perfectly certain to go and biff
The French one into the water.
So when you shall hear a noise on high
Like the medium brush of a barber,
And a monstrous bullet falls from the sky
And blows off the head of a Prussian spy
As he dallies in Dover Harbour,
You shall know that at last the War Lord's host,
By dint of a stout endeavour,
Have chipped off a bit of the Calais coast
And caused the isle that they pant for most
To be further away than ever.
Evoe.