Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/278

Their noble names were mentioned Oh the burning black disgrace!
By a brutal Saxon paper in an Irish shooting-case;
They sat upon it for a year, then steeled their heart to brave it,
And "coruscating innocence" the learned Judges gave it.

Bear witness, Heaven, of that grim crime beneath the surgeon's knife,
The "honourable gentlemen" deplored the loss of life!
Bear witness of those chanting choirs that burk and shirk and snigger,
No man laid hand upon the knife or finger to the trigger!

Cleared in the face of all mankind beneath the winking skies,
Like phoenixes from Phoenix Park (and what lay there) they rise!
Go shout it to the emerald seas give word to Erin now,
Her honourable gentlemen are cleared and this is how:—

They only paid the Moonlighter his cattle-hocking price,
They only helped the murderer with counsel's best advice,
But—sure it keeps their honour white the learned Court believes
They never give a piece of plate to murderers and thieves.

They never told the ramping crowd to card a woman's hide,
They never marked a man for death what fault of theirs he died?—
They only said "intimidate," and talked and went away
By God, the boys that did the work were braver men than they!

Their sin it was that fed the fire small blame to them that heard—
The boys get drunk on rhetoric, and madden at a word