They are marching on Herat, half a million men, or more,
Over the frontier they’re swarming;
And they do not seem to mind at all my remonstrative roar,
But grin as if its melody were charming;
Turk and Italian, Teuton and Gaul,
Friends of the past, where, where are ye all?
Great Patience! are ye laughing at the poor old lion’s fall?
Really, the prospect is alarming.
’Tis useless boasting now we can whip them one to ten,
Woe is me! the fact is quite contrary;
We might when “English” soldiers came from Irish hill and glen,
But there’s no recruiting now in Tipperary.
No, nor from Antrim downward to Clare,
From seaboard of Galway across to Kildare,
Can I find a single Irishman to help me anywhere,
Except he be a Corydon or Carey.
Oh dear, oh kind, oh glorious, oh darling Uncle Sam,
Am I not your father and your mother?
Pray listen to the bleatings of the martyred British lamb,
Help, brave soul, oh help, before I smother.
Irving and Arnold your culture will bless,
All the dudes of London your image will caress,
Oscar go across again to teach you how to dress,
And we’ll be the world to one another.
Bennett, Smalley, don’t you hear the marching going on?
The tramp my Indian provinces is shaking,
Greycoats from the Ural and Cossacks from the Don,
Is it any wonder that I’m quaking?
O Lord! the tortures, the terrors I feel!
Even my roar has been changed to a squeal,
And—my heart to palsy, my very blood congeal—
That d—d old Irish wolf-dog is awaking!