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The Gang
by James StephensOur fathers must have sinned: we pay for it!
Through them the base-born tribe that sold their king
Sneaked into power, and in high places sit,
And do their will and wish in everything;
For they may rob and kill, grieve and disgrace
All who are left alive of Eiver's race.
They seized with daring guile on rank and pelf,
And swore that they would never bend a knee
Unto the king: they robbed the Church herself:
They stole our princes' lands, and o'er the sea
They packed those princes, or drove them away
To barren rocks and fields that have no clay.
That spawn of base mechanics! who could ne'er,
Though Doomsday came, by any art be made
Noble, are noble now, and have no care:
Snugly they sit and safe and unafraid
In stately places, proud as if the mud
And slime that swills their veins were princes' blood.
Let us be wise and wary of that gang!
When they seem friendly know they have much wit,
And if it come that any man shall hang,
This neck will go unchoked, that nose unslit,
For, be things wry and crooked and to guess,
Those twisters are at home in twistiness.
We know now what their plottings were about,
And how they planned, and what they meant to win;
'Twas God, not us, that took their tangles out,
For no sleek eel inside an oily skin
Could slip with more address from harm than they
Can slip from punishment and get away.
When trouble came it was their plan to get
Our friends into the boat they meant to leave,
And there was some one left to pay their debt,
And they were free again to lie and thieve:
So they could put the feet of the man they'd rob
Into the boots of the one that did the job.
If burnt child does truly dread the flame,
If wounded soldier shrinks again to see
A steel point sloping to him, let the same
Experience teach our chiefs that they may be
Crafty in meeting craft, and may beware
Of brewer's bees and buzzers everywhere.
Unto the Mind which pardons sin I pray,
I pray to Him who did permit our woe
But halted our destruction, that to-day
Kindness and love and trust and inward glow
Of vision light our hearts with light divine,
So that we know our way until the end of time.