Young Lord Falcon And The Scarlet Woman (An Edwardian Adventure).(Poem)

 
YOUNG LORD FALCON AND THE SCARLET WOMAN 
(AN EDWARDIAN ADVENTURE) 
 
(Wars on Terror the best part of a century ago can be found 
in Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, Arthur Conan Doyle 's His 
Last Bow, John Buchan's Greenmantle and Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu 
series. The Roman Catholic Church is unaccountably 
missing from this list.) 
 
   Young Lord Falcon struck the coffin with his black Malacca cane, 
      "By the bowels of the Antichrist, you've hit it! 
   It was Popery that did it, like a hammer to the brain, 
   Just the merest breath of priest-craft drives an Englishman insane 
   And my father's family honour wouldn't let him take the strain. 
      How could any decent Protestant admit it? 
   He had booked his one-way ticket on that Everlasting Train 
      With a bullet to be bitten, so he bit it, 
        Yes he bit it. 
      It was written. He was smitten. So he bit it. 
 
   "Fifty cardinals in conclave at the Vatican today 
      Are discussing plans to rob the British blind, 
   And a one-eyed Benedictine, Father Lucius O'Shea 
   (He's the silver-tongued deceiver with a licence to betray, 
   Who's the logic-chopping master-spy that funds the IRA 
      To recruit among the dregs of humankind) 
   Has been sent by papal ...