Love for the
lost leader is still strong in the breasts of his quondam followers
who now must fight him; in Heaven he will not only be pardoned, he
will be first there as he was always first here. In the following
lines, the prepositions are interesting:
Shakespeare was _of_ us, Milton was _for_ us,
Burns, Shelley, were _with_ us.
Shakespeare was indeed of the common people, but so far as we can
conjecture, certainly not for them; Milton was not of them, but was
wholly for them, being indeed regarded as an anarchist; Burns was a
peasant, and Shelley a blue-blood, but both were with the popular
cause. Browning himself, as we happen to know from one of his
personal sonnets, was an intense Liberal in feeling.
CAVALIER TUNES
1842
I. MARCHING ALONG
I
Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King,
Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing:
And, pressing a troop unable to stoop
And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop,
Marched them along, fifty-score strong,
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.
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