PLAIN ENGLISH!
John Bull loquitur:—
"English as she is spoke," my little friend,
Is not precisely what your pundits deem it.
Let me give you a lesson! This must end.
That flag, however lightly you esteem it,
Has not so long waved folds fair, broad, and ample
To all earth's winds for you at last to trample.
No! What the mischief is your little game?
Monkeyish tricks help neither power nor dignity.
A little country heir of much fair fame,
I'd like to treat with patience and benignity;
But memories of Camoens and De Gama
Should save you from the clown's part in earth's drama.
Clowning it is to caper in this style,
Trying to make a foot-cloth of my banner.
You ought to know the temper of our Isle,
You've tested it in circumstantial manner.
Down before Soult and Junot you'd have gone
But for that very flag, and Wellington.
Old friends? Of course we are. Old rivals too,
In commerce and adventure the world over.
From John the Great's time to the present, you
In Africa have been a daring rover;
"The Rover's free"! Ah! that's good lyric brag—
He is not free to trample on my flag!
Vasco de Gama and Cabral, no doubt,
Held an exceedingly free hand aforetime.
Cocks of the walk were those adventurers stout,
But then their time was different from your time.
In what you call your "civilising labours,"
You'll have to think a little of your neighbours.
"Prancing proconsuls" often stir up strife,
Which to abate diplomacy must strain.
Your Pinto seems to mean war to the knife—
He's too much given to the 'Ercles vein.
I'm sure I do not want to hurt your feelings,
I simply say I can't stand Serpa's dealings.
Plain English this, my little Portuguee,
And Barros Gomes will tell you I mean it.
Fight? Pigmy versus Titan? Fiddlededee!
My meaning—without menaces, you'll glean it—
Is this—I would not hector, no, nor "nag,"
Only, my lad—you'll just come off that Flag!