  HE had no heart for war, its ways and means, Its train of machinations and machines, Its murky provenance, its flagrant ends; His soul, unpledged for his own dividends, He had not ventured for a nation's spoils. So had he sighed for England in her toils Of greed, was't like his pulse would beat less blithe To see the Teuton shells on Rotherhithe And Mayfair—so each body had 'scaped its niche, The wretched poor, the still more wretched rich? Why had he sought the struggle and its pain? Lest little girls with linked hands in the lane Should look "You did not shield us!" as they wended Across his window when the war was ended. |
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