Explore "The Englishman" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Born in the flesh, and bred in the bone, / Some of us harbour still / A New World pride: and we flaunt or hide / The Spirit of Bunker Hill. / We claim our place, as a separate race, / Or a self-created clan; / Till there comes a day when we like to say, / ‘We are kin of the Englishman.'
For under the front that seems so cold, / And the voice that is wont to storm, / We are certain to find, a big, broad mind / And a heart that is soft and warm. / And he carries his woes in a lordly way, / As only the great souls can: / And it makes us glad when in truth we say, / We are kin of the Englishman.'
He slams his door in the face of the world, / If he thinks the world too bold. / He will even curse; but he opens his purse / To the poor, and the sick, and the old. / He is slow in giving to woman the vote, / And slow to put up her fan; / But he gives her room in the hour of doom, / And dies-like an Englishman.