I often think o’ t’feed, mi lads,
When t’ gentleman I meet;
Bud nauther on us speiks a word
Abaht that glorious neet;
In fact, I hardly can misel,
I feel so fearful shy;
Fer I ate a deal o’ t’rosted gooise,
An’ warm’d his giblet pie.
The Grand Old Man.
I sing of a statesman, a statesman of worth,
The grandest old statesman there is upon earth;
When his axe is well sharpened we all must agree,
He can level a nation as well as a tree.
He can trundle such words from his serpent-like tongue
As fairly bewilder both old men and young;
He can make some believe that’s black which is white,
And others believe it is morn when it’s night.
He has tampered with kings, and connived with the Czar;
His Bulgarian twaddle once caused a great war,
Where thousands were slain, but what did he heed,
He still went to Church the lessons to read.
A bumbailey army to Egypt he sent,
In search of some money which long had been spent;
He blew up the forts, then commended his men,
And ordered them back to old England again.
In the far distant Soudan the Mahdi arose,
No doubt he intended to crush all his foes;
But Gladstone sent Gordon, who ne’er was afraid,
Then left him to perish without any aid.
“If I,” said poor Gordon, “get out of this place,
That traitor called Gladstone shall ne’er see my face—
To the Congo I’ll go, if I am not slain,
And never put foot in old England again.”
When the sad news arrived of the fall of Khartoum,
And of how our brave Gordon had met his sad doom,
Gladstone went to the theatre and grinned in a box,
Tho’ he knew that old England was then on the rocks.
He allowed the Dutch Boers on Majuba Hill,
Our brave little army to torture and kill;
And while our poor fellows did welter in gore,
He gave up the sword to the treacherous Boer.