Volume 153 — IDYLLS OF THE KING OF PRUSSIA.

So spake Sir GERARD (U.S.A.) and ceased. Then answered WILLIAM, talking through his hat: "When first the heathen rose against our realm, That haunt of peace where all day long occurred The cooing of innumerable doves, I hailed my knighthood where I sat in hall At high Potsdam the Palace, and they came; And all the rafters rang with rousing Hochs. "So to my feet they drew and kissed my boots And laid their maily fists in mine and sware To reverence their Kaiser as their God And vice versâ; to uphold the Faith Approved by me as Champion of the Church; To ride abroad redressing Belgium's wrongs; To honour treaties like a virgin's troth; To serve as model in the nations' eyes Of strength with sweetness wed; to hack their way Without superfluous violence; to spare The best cathedrals lest my heart should bleed, Nor butcher babes and women, or at least No more than needful—in a word, behave Like Prussian officers, the flower of men. "I bade them take ensample from their Lord Of perfect manners, wearing on their helms The bouquet of a blameless Junkerhood, And be a law of culture to themselves, Though other laws, not made in Germany, Should perish, being scrapped. For so I deemed That this our Order of the Table Round Should mould its Christian pattern on the spheres, Itself unchanged amid a world new-made, And men should say, in that fair after-time, 'The old Order sticketh, yielding place to none.'" So be. Whereat that other held his peace, Seeming, for courtesy, to yield assent. But, as within the lists at Camelot Some temporary knight mislays his seat And falls, and, falling, lets his morion loose, And lights upon his head, and all the spot Swells like a pumpkin, and he hides the bulge Beneath his gauntlet lest it cause remark And curious comment—so behind his hand Sir GERARD's cheek, that had his tongue inside, Swelled like a pumpkin....