With a trouble and devotion meritorious
Search your history, oblivious of cost;
Speak of battles where our arms have proved victorious.
And carefully suppress the ones we've lost.
Take the British Flag, and mention (not a few sing it)
The battles and the breezes that it braves.
And oh, mind you don’t forget in introducing it
That no one but Britannia rules the waves.
Brag a deal about our wisdom and prosperity,
How foemen with facility we trounce;
Smile with pity at American temerity.
And talk about their "bunkum” and their “bounce.”
Teach the “Yankee” we’re superior to him in all
, Boast our Legislature’s patriarchal care,
But you needn't name the beggar and the criminal
(Though, possibly, we'd beat them even there).
Then jeer about the Russian and his milit’ry,
And mention our “inviolable coast,”
Declaring our resentment isn’t dilit’ry
If anyone should dare to touch “a post.”
Then proclaiming, with a beautiful humility,
The British pluck the only pluck there is,
You'll contrast it with the Spaniard's instability.
The Frenchman’s inconsistency and “fizz;”
And their self-respect at x (its algebraical)
’Twere well to place, with self-sufficient sneer,
And thank vour stars, in spirit pharassical,
Your Land is not as other Lands appear.
But this I think will strike the great majority.
The status of a country must be sad.
When you only show its great superiority,
Contrasting it with everything that's bad !
(Here the Cynical One takes a Pill.)
Bibliography
“How to Write a Patriotic Song.” Fun. (12 June 1878): 241. Transcribed from the online version at the University of Florida Library. Web. 7 August 2017.
Last modified 7 August 2017