Читать книгу Revised Edition of Poems - Bill o'th' Hoylus End - Страница 5

From the red fields of gore, ’midst war’s dreadful clang,

   I hear a sad strain o’er oceans afar:

Oh, shame, shame upon you, ye proud men of England,

   Whose highest ambition is rapine and war!

         Through your vain wickedness

         Thousands are fatherless,

False your pretensions old Egypt to save;

         Arabs with spear in hand

         Far in a distant land

Made our brave Gordon a sad and red grave.

On Nile’s sunny banks, with the Arab’s great nation,

   Brave Gordon was honoured and worshipped by all,

The acknowledged master of the great situation,

   Until England’s bondholders caused Egypt to fall.

         Another great blunder,

         Makes the world wonder,

Where is Britannia’s sword, sceptre and shield?

         War and disaster

         Come thicker and faster,

Oh, for the days of the Great Beaconsfield!

Oh, Great Beaconsfield! the wise and the clever,

   When will thy place in our nation be filled?

Britannia’s shrill answer is never, oh never,

   My Beaconsfield’s dead, and my Gordon is killed!

         Oh, blame not my foemen

         Or a Brutus-like Roman,

Or Soudanese Arabs for Gordon’s sad doom;

         But blame that vain Briton

         Whose name is true written,

The slayer of Gordon, who fell at Khartoum.