Should we not hear the whole vice of the people

Pursue democracy as politics’ most sovereign idol

Abiding thereby by a common general wail

So every individual gets his rightful Dignitas?

I look after me, myself, says this rumbunktious here,

And I’ve a vanity project, I am set to commandeer,

Says here another: my region, to call for self-determination

Thus I declare my backyard a very Sovereign Nation.

I do this unilaterally, but yet my neighbours huff;

I don’t think what they’ve offered me has been select enough

I think, I think, I insist upon this I

My backyard can do better …. sudden comes a battlecry….

Disturbances and upsets my declared regime brings on

(That little ruckass I’ve set going to make my name upon)

Has dealt material blows to massive deals of simple folk

They won’t look sideways at me anymore and see a joke

Instead in times to come in my blessed motherland

I shall become historic, famous, with my favourite brand

Of Moscatel proverb on every subject’s bitter tongue:

“The wine preferred of him who slaughtered bodies left as dung”

To enrich our fields and spread the desserts wide

This word will be on school lips and pronounced by every child

And I, my project, urges, its infliction, it must be

So that a puerile fantasy might hope to come to be.

It’s not I’m under duress or not living well

My backyard is an Eden where God’s gorgeous bounties swell

But this is not enough for me, enough is liberty

I ask the people’s will to have this mirage violently

My fellows are ambitious, lending me approved consent,

And want by their conceit to reap likewise complete mayhem

Mad keen for that bit better we propose to take too much

For each one like myself wants to be Master of the patch

We have too much; maybe we ought to seek to lose a little

Adversity would test us and decide our sterling mettle

But we, we would make waste, cause many sufferers needless pain

And on the way, you ask me, what should be the general gain?