The pride of race, the pride of place, and bond of blood they feel,
The Indies indicate it and New Zealand shows new zeal.
The daughters in their Mother's house are mistress in their own;
They are her heirs, her flesh is theirs, and they would share her bone!
Lo! Greater Britain stretches out her hands across the sea;
Australia forgets her impecuniositee;
On Afric's shore the wily Boer is ready now to fight,
For the Khaki and the rooinek, for the Empire and the Right!
Come forth, you valiant volunteer,
Come forth to do or die,
You give a hand to Mother, and
She'll help you by and by!
Upon her score of distant shores the sun is always bright;
(And always in her empire, too, it must somewhere be night!)
Her birthplace is the Ocean, where her pennon braves the breeze;
Her motto, 'What is ours we'll hold (and what is not we'll seize!)'
Her rule is strong, her purse is long, her sons are stern and true,
With iron hands she holds her lands (and other people's too).
She sees her chance and cries 'Advance,' while others stand and gape,
Her oxengoads shall claim the roads from Cairo to the Cape.
Come out, you big black Fuzzy-Wuz,
You've got to take your share;
We'll make you sweat till you forget
You broke a British Square!
North and South and East and West, the message travels fast!
East and West and North and South, the bugles blare and blast!
Hear we but a whisper that the foe is at the walls,
And, by Gad, we'll show them something when the Mother Country calls!
AFTWORD
'Tis done! We reach the final page
With feelings of relief, I'm certain;
And there arrives, at such a stage,
The moment to ring down the Curtain.
(This metaphor is freely taken
From Shakespeare,—or perhaps from Bacon.)
The Book perused, our Future brings
A plethora of blank to-morrows,
When memories of Happier Things
Will be our Sorrow's Crown of Sorrows.
(I trust you recognise this line
As being Tennyson's, not mine.)
My verses may indeed be few,
But are they not, to quote the poet,
'The sweetest things that ever grew
Beside a human door'? I know it!
(What an inhuman door would be,
Enquire of Wordsworth, please, not me.)