Silken ways and softer manners

Bend the barbarous victor down;

Woe unto the Soviet banners!

M. Krassin is in town.

Hark! the Lydian lute is thrumming

Roses fall about his feet;

He shall pardon each shortcoming,

Conqueror he shall taste defeat.

Puzzled, maybe slightly baffled,

He shall get to like it all,

Overlook the absent scaffold

At the windows of Whitehall.

Piccadilly, though it warps his

Sense of justice, he shall see

Unencumbered by the corpses

Of a bloated bourgeoisie;

Quite forget the stern aspirants

To a nobler newer world;

Tread the Birdcage Walk with tyrants,

Have his hair by Bond Street curled;

Lulled by scented airs and graces,

Feel the Scythian ardours fade;

Purchase underwear and braces

In the Burlington Arcade;

Losing for a mess of pottage

Trotsky's wireless apothegms,

Take a little country cottage

And a houseboat on the Thames.

Oh to think that as he lingers

Hour by hour he needs must hook

Round imperial palms the fingers

Of a hand that Lenin shook.

Commerce like an iron girder

Props the new world and the old;

All men know the stains of murder

May be lightly washed with gold.

Ah, but when the bright-eyed vulture,

Fresh from feasting on the slain,

Learns the way of foreign culture

Shall his claws grow sharp again?

So for him we weep, the Tartar

Blood-bedabbled to his wrists,

When his free soul sinks to barter

With abhorred capitalists.

Silken ways and softer manners

Bend the sturdiest victor down;

Woe unto the Soviet banners!

M. Krassin is in town.

Evoe.