We picture with unfeigned dismay
Man-glutted lands of other flags,
They multiply but to decay,
And rot in pestilence and rags;
Why hasten we to emulate
These helpless tragedies of Fate?
The land our children's sons will need,
That land we have wide open thrown
To heathen knaves of other breed
And paunchy pirates of our own:
We give away earth's greatest prize,
And pat ourselves, and call us wise.
No father he who to the slums
For husband to his child would send,
And no one worthy of her comes
She lives a maiden to the end:
Yet we have placed our virgin trust
In spawn of Continental lust.
If dumb we be to Reason's cries—
Our children's cause she pleads in vain—
Our outraged sons at length will rise
And seize their heritage again;
And fools, who prate of vested right,
Will either cease to prate—or fight.
The land is ours, the land will keep,
And Time is nowise near its end;
We hold our birthright all too cheap
Its sacredness to comprehend;
In after years our sons will say,
"Why frittered ye the land away?"
Sergeant Blue of the Mounted Police was a so-so kind of a guy;
He swore a bit, and he lied a bit, and he boozed a bit on the sly;
But he held the post at Snake Creek Bend for country and home and God,
And he cursed the first and forgot the rest—which wasn't the least bit odd.
Now the life of the North West Mounted Police breeds an all-round kind of man;
A man who can jug a down-South thug when he rushes the red-eye can;
A man who can pray with a dying bum or break up a range stampede—
Such are the men of the Mounted Police and such are the men they breed.