Versos English S. Baring-Gould The Turk and the Tory

English poem

The Turk and the Tory

by

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By Allah the Turk with his blade and brand Is ruthlessly thinning a people down Red rapine and murder race hand in hand Through hamlet and village and town And the fleet of old England is keeping the ring That the Turk unmolested may have his fling

Wild women are leaping and shriek in flame Their babes beheaded and spiked by score Weak maidens are outraged and dead in shame The ravening Turk is yelling for more And the premier of England has laughter and jeers For woman’s dishonour and widow’s tears

The Heart of the Turk is turned to stone The life of the harmless is sifted chaff The rust of their gold must have gnawed at the bone When human misery wakens a laugh And quivering zeal to re-rivet the chain On the victim who’s writhing in wrath and pain

The blood that has dripped from the wild beast’s maw On the scutcheon of England has left a smear The red-spattered tiger is dubbed bashaw The laughing hyena is crowned a peer But the blood of our brothers cries out to God For the Turk a gallows. The Tory a rod

O lion of Britain awake, arise! With bristling mane and a wrathful roar Bid liberty dawn on those Eastern skies And tyranny trample and blight no more To the bats and the owls with the Tory and Turk The lying excuse and the fiendish work