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,