“Now, lads, in the future, it is to be work and pray, and do the varry best you can with your new looms. It may so happen that in the course of years some nation that hes lost the grip of all its good and prudent senses, will try to invade England. It isn’t likely, but it might be. Then I say to each man of you, without an hour’s delay, do as I’ve often heard you sing—
“ ‘Off with your labor cap! rush to the van!
The sword is your tool, and the height of your plan
Is to turn yoursen into a fighting man.’
“Lads, I niver was much on poetry but when I was a varry young man, I learned eleven lines that hev helped me in many hours of trial and temptation to remember that I was an English gentleman, and so bound by birth and honor to behave like one.”
“Will tha say them eleven lines to us, squire? Happen they might help us a bit, too.”
“I am sure of it, Jonathan.” With these words, the kind-hearted, scrupulously honorable gentleman lifted his hat, and as he did so, fifty paper caps were lifted as if by one hand and the men who wore them rose as one man.
“You may keep your standing, lads, the eleven lines are worthy of that honor; and then in a proud, glad enthusiasm, the squire repeated them with such a tone of love and such a grandeur of diction and expression as no words can represent:—
“This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,