"When the torch is near the powder"—when a boat, f'r instance, sinks,
And the "hyphens" raise a loud hurrah and blow themselves to drinks;
When 'bout a hundred neutral lives are snuffed out like a torch,
An' "hyphens" read the news an' smoke, a-settin' on the porch—
Well, it's then the native's kind o' apt to see a little red,
An' it's hardly fair to criticise the burning things he sed.
For since the eagle's not a bird that thrives within a cage,
One kind o' hears with sympathy his screams of baffled rage.
There's something sort o' horrible, that catches at the breath,
To visualize some two score babes most foully done to death;