RINGMASTER

The winter of eight-eight and nine

Was aching cold, it chilled the very soul

They came from the country in twos and threes

A trickle, a river, a torrent, a sea,

Driven by hunger, driven by pain

SERGEANT

Company...Halt!...

RINGMASTER

A hundred thousand reached the barricade

SERGEANT

Present... Fire!...

RINGMASTER

Three hundred dead, shot down like rats

Three hundred lives, snuffed out like that

Have a care if you treat your people like vermin

You could end up with bloodstained ermine

But soft

As ever in the ebb and flow

Sweet reason, deft and incorrupt

Adoring of the human kind illuminates man's plight

Should be embrace

The brute and base

Tilt blindly at the carousel

Or note, at least, the other voice

And entertain the choice

Between the darkness and the light?