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The age of bargaining, said Burke,
Has come: to-day the turbaned Turk
(Sleep, Richard of the lion heart!
Sleep on, nor from your cerements start)
Is England’s friend and fast ally;
The Moslem tramples on the Greek,
And on the Cross and altar-stone,
And Christendom looks tamely on,
And hears the Christian maiden shriek,
And sees the Christian father die;
And not a sabre-blow is given
For Greece and fame, for faith and heaven,
By Europe’s craven chivalry.

You’ll ask if yet the Percy lives
In the armed pomp of feudal state?
The present representatives
Of Hotspur and his “gentle Kate,”
Are some half-dozen serving-men
In the drab coat of William Penn;
A chambermaid, whose lip and eye,
And cheek, and brown hair, bright and curling,
Spoke Nature’s aristocracy;
And one, half groom, half seneschal,
Who bowed me through court, bower, and hall,
From donjon-keep to turret wall,
For ten-and-sixpence sterling.