IMPERIALISM
The Tailor sat with his goose on the table— (Table of Laws it was, he said) Fashioning uniforms dyed in sable, Picked out with gold and sanguine red.
"This," he said as he snipped and drafted, "Sublimely foreshadowing cosmic Fate With world-dominion august, resplendent, Will wear, as nothing can wear but Hate!
"Chimerical dreams of souls romantic Are out of date as an old wife's rune. Britain is doomed as Plato's Republic—" When in at the door came a lilting tune!
"Here to-day and gone to-morrow— All in the luck of the road! Didn't come to stay forever, But we'll take our share of the load!"
Highlanders, Irish, Danes, Egyptians, Norman or Slav the dialects ran; Something more than a board-school shaped them— Drill and discipline never made man!
Once they knew Crecy, Hastings, Drogheda, Moscow, Assaye, Khartoum or Glencoe,— Now the old hatreds are tinder for campfires. England has only her world to show!
They are not dreamers, these men of the Empire, Guarding their land in the old-time way, And this is the style that prevails in the Legions,— "The foe of the past is a friend to-day."
"It's a long, long road to the Empire (From Beersheba even to Dan) And the time is rather late for a chronic Hymn of Hate,— And we know the tailor doesn't make the man!"