Let the blasphemous cry that it's done with an eye to your ultimate personal profit, That your chivalrous task is but worn as a mask till occasion allows you to doff it, Let the caviller say that the victim to-day is preserved from a final disaster, And is saved from the Japs that to-morrow perhaps he may furnish a meal for their master: Yet I cannot believe that what Concerts achieve is by reasons ulterior dictated, I am perfectly sure that their motives are pure (by themselves it is frequently stated); By themselves we are taught that they never in thought could the Good with the Selfish commingle-- What they do is designed for the good of mankind with an eye that is simple and single! For whomever--_e.g._, let us say the Chinee-- you have freed from the fear of invasion, Should he presently seem in a posture to be which is open to Moral Persuasion,-- How you take him in hand, a philanthropist band! how you toil to improve his condition, With a noble disdain of the trouble and pain of a wholly unselfish Partition! For it grieves you, of course, when--ignoring the force which the doctrine of Mine and of Thine has-- E'en Integrity's self you must lay on the shelf (I allude, not to Europe's but China's)! Let detractors contend that your means and your end are the end and the means of the vulture-- Such an altruist plan must betoken the man who is bent on diffusion of culture. Be it yours to assuage for inadequate wage our unseemly contentions and quarrels, Be it yours to maintain your respectable reign in the sphere of Political Morals; And, relying no more on the shedding of gore or the rule of torpedoes and sabres, Make beneficent plots for dividing in lots the domains of your paralyzed neighbours! THE ARREST (1881) Come hither, Terence Mulligan, and sit upon the floor, And list a tale of woe that's worse than all you heard before: Of all the wrongs the Saxon's done since Erin's shores he trod The blackest harm he's wrought us now--sure Doolan's put in quod! It was the Saxon minister, he said unto himself, I'll never have a moment's peace till Doolan's on the shelf-- So bid them make a warrant out and send it by the mail, To put that daring patriot in dark Kilmainham gaol. The minions of authority, that document they wrote, And Mr Buckshot took the thing upon the Dublin boat: Och! sorra much he feared the waves, incessantly that roar, For deeper flows the sea of blood he shed on Ireland's shore! But the hero slept unconscious still--tis kilt he was with work, Haranguing of the multitudes in Waterford and Cork,-- Till Buckshot and the polis came and rang the front door bell Disturbing of his slumbers sweet in Morrison's Hotel.