CUERVO - Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia

234 DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND LYRICS
The priests mean to stomp.
And all round the glad church lie old bottles
With gunpowder stopped,
Which will be, when the Image re-enters,
Religiously popped.
And at night from the crest of Calvano
Great bonfires will hang,
On the plain will the trumpets join chorns,
And more poppers bang I
At all events, come-to the garden,
As far as the wall,
See me tap with a hoe on the plaster
Till out there shall fall
A scorpion with wide angry nippers I
.. . "Such trifles "-you say?
FOl'tu, in my England at home,
Men meet gravely to-day
And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws
Is righteous and wise
-If 'tis proper, Scirocco should vanish
In black from the skies I
XXII
THE LOST LEADER
1
JUST for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat­
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote;
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
So much was their's who so little allowed:
How all our copper had gone for his service I
Rags-were they purple, his heart had been proud!
We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured
him,
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,
Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
Made him our pattern to live and to die I
Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,
Burns, Shelley, were with us,-they watch from their
graves!
He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves I
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