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And shall we don the modern creed
Of dull indifference and greed
Where once, in hosts, the grey rats fell
And thousands thronged the gates to hell?
Nay! let Calabria’s sturdy faith,
Who burnt her heretics as late
As the proud year of fifty-eight,
Recal us to the stake and flame
And paint our recreant cheeks with shame.
On! brothers! on!” the haggard wraith
Bounced from his stall, “to the attack!
On! brothers! on! with fire and rack;
And damned be he that first holds back.”
As thus he spake, the throng, entranced,
Deployed, and like a wall advanced,
Or bellying surf, all arm and leg,
Such as when o’er thy virgin scrub,
O Michigan or Winnipeg!
The proud red Indians whoop and dance,
Blood-thirstier than thy weazels, France!
And all converge upon the tub
To sweep it, with the man of grace
Upon it, off this planet’s face,
Or, if a star-were goal too far,
At least, from off the market-place.
In Spagna’s happy lands, we know,
Some century or more ago,
A popish genius once contrived
A cage for heretics, derived
From his own vivid sense of hell.
It was a toy to fill with joy
The soul of every Jesuit shrived:
