A. W. Cole.
AN IDYL OF A PRINCE.
(NOT AFTER TENNYSON.)
If ever by chance
You should happen to glance
At a map of the world, and should come upon France,
Raise your eyes just a bit, un-
Till you have hit on,
An Island that’s known as the home of the Briton.
Now, if it weren’t wrong
To put faith in a song,
You would find from a ditty, by one Mr. Campbell,
That one fine day this island
Arose, high and dry land,
Right out of the sea—from no submarine gambol;
But was turned out by order,
Express to afford her
Assistance to Neptune in ruling the ocean,
Which may be the truth, or a mere poet’s notion.
Be this as it may—
And I don’t mean to say
I have faith in the literal truth of the lay—
She has ruled the ocean a pretty long while, and
Is considered a bright little, tight little island;
And, as one thing to brag of,
Possesses a flag of
Such capital bunting, that one Thomas Dibdin
Declared as a fact—and I don’t think he fibbed in
The assertion, which every nation allows and hears—
It has braved war and tempest, unhurt, for a thousand years.
And, in spite of the seas,
Of the foes and the breeze,
It’s as good at this moment as when they first made it,—
Spotless, untattered, and not a bit faded.
To cherish this standard
She has fought, in each land, hard,
But the sea, after all, has been ever her grand card;
And the waves, as they roll
From equator to pole,
Bear fleets on their highway which never pay toll,
Being franked by this banner,
Which waves, in the manner
I’ve mentioned before, all the breezes that fan her.
I think it an error, to fancy that history
Ever records (when it’s truthful) a mystery.
The eyes of a mole
Can’t read a large scroll;
They may pick out each letter, but don’t see the whole.
The qui currit potest
Legere’s no test,
As those who have dipped ’neath the surface must know best.
So, though it seems queer
To children who hear
That the tight little island we’re writing of here
Has contrived to get on with such brilliant successes,—
Adding conquest to conquest, until she possesses
Much more than old Rome ever ventured to vote as
Her provinces—see orbs veteribus notus—
Yet one who reflects
On the matter, detects
All the secret to lie in the fact of the ocean
Receiving his child’s never-failing devotion,—
A devotion repaid
By his ne’er-failing aid,
So that all the world over,
From China to Dover,
Her fleets defy foeman, and pirate, and rover,
And her shores are as happy as cows are in clover.
Now let your eyes stray
On the map, a long way
From this tight little island, until they make play
Over dreary hot lands
Of deserts and sands,
Where brave Captain Speke
Has set off to seek
For the source of the Nile, till you come, if you’ll follow me,
To a country baptized with the name of Cape Colony.
And you’ll find, near its south-western corner, stuck down
At the foot of the mountain called Table, a town.
In this town, then, there dwell,
As geographers tell,
A great many people of all sorts of hues,
Heathen, Mohammedans, Christians and Jews,
Dutchmen and Englishmen, black Mozambiquas,
Tawny Malays, and a sprinkling of Griquas,
Hottentots, Kafirs, and Negroes and others,
Who’d be puzzled to point out their fathers or mothers.