OUR SOVEREIGN KING

by: Felipe Pardo (1806-1886)

BIT of topsy-turvy artifice

Goes wandering like a monarch through our streets,

A whiskey-soaked, be-daggered king that meets

To riot for whatever cause there is;

A wayward autocrat, whose services

To earth seem but the deadly plagues he heats;

A potentate of such ignoble feats

As nailed the Saviour to that cross of His.

 

A sultan whom no bond of law restrains,

From whose injustices there is no appeal;

A king anoint with Satan's sulphur stains,

A red and white and black-faced Czar, whose heel

America, our continent, profanes,--

And called "The Sovereign People"--for his pains.

--Translated by Thomas Walsh

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