When Peace lured the Powers to her House at the Hague

With promises specious and welcome though vague

Of a time when the terrors of war should lie hid

And the leopard fall headlong in love with the kid,

She drew up a set of Utopian rules

For the guidance of all the best bellicose schools.

Among the more notable schemes that she planned

She fashioned them bounds to their methods on land,

Taught the whole of them, too, how humane they could be

If a scrap should occur, as it might, on the sea—