| |
| “FOR our martyr’d Charles I pawn’d my plate, | |
| For his son I spent my all, | |
| That a churl might dine, and drink my wine, | |
| And preach in my father’s hall: | |
| That father died on Marston Moor, | 5 |
| My son on Worcester plain; | |
| But the king he turn’d his back on me | |
| When he got his own again. | |
| |
| “The other day, there came, God wot! | |
| A solemn, pompous ass, | 10 |
| Who begged to know if I did not go | |
| To the sacrifice of Mass: | |
| I told him fairly to his face, | |
| That in the field of fight | |
| I had shouted loud for Church and King, | 15 |
| When he would have run outright. | |
| |
| “He talk’d of the Man of Babylon | |
| With his rosaries and copes, | |
| As if a Roundhead was n’t worse | |
| Than half a hundred Popes. | 20 |
| I don’t know what the people mean, | |
| With their horror and affright; | |
| All Papists that I ever knew | |
| Fought stoutly for the right. | |
| |
| “I now am poor and lonely, | 25 |
| This cloak is worn and old, | |
| But yet it warms my loyal heart, | |
| Through sleet, and rain, and cold, | |
| When I call to mind the Cavaliers, | |
| Bold Rupert at their head, | 30 |
| Bursting through blood and fire, with cries | |
| That might have wak’d the dead. | |
| |
| “Then spur and sword was the battle word, | |
| And we made their helmets ring, | |
| Howling like madmen, all the while, | 35 |
| For God and for the King. | |
| And though they snuffled psalms, to give | |
| The Rebel-dogs their due, | |
| When the roaring shot pour’d close and hot | |
| They were stalwart men and true. | 40 |
| |
| “On the fatal field of Naseby, | |
| Where Rupert lost the day | |
| By hanging on the flying crowd | |
| Like a lion on his prey, | |
| I stood and fought it out, until, | 45 |
| In spite of plate and steel, | |
| The blood that left my veins that day | |
| Flow’d up above my heel. | |
| |
| “And certainly, it made those quail | |
| Who never quail’d before, | 50 |
| To look upon the awful front | |
| Which Cromwell’s horsemen wore. | |
| I felt that every hope was gone, | |
| When I saw their squadrons form, | |
| And gather for the final charge | 55 |
| Like the coming of the storm. | |
| |
| “Oh! where was Rupert in that hour | |
| Of danger, toil, and strife? | |
| It would have been to all brave men | |
| Worth a hundred years of life | 60 |
| To have seen that black and gloomy force, | |
| As it poured down in line, | |
| Met midway by the Royal horse | |
| And Rupert of the Rhine. | |
| |
| “All this is over now, and I | 65 |
| Must travel to the tomb, | |
| Though the king I serv’d has got his own, | |
| In poverty and gloom. | |
| Well, well, I serv’d him for himself, | |
| So I must not now complain, | 70 |
| But I often wish that I had died | |
| With my son on Worcester plain.” | |
| |
