II - Aah the meeting was good and the friends were kind
and the temperance brass band struck up just in time
(give the blind man change)
It's like the sap is rising on the trunk (root and branch)
And some of the guys were rolling round drunk(looking for love)
Beaks wet with lipstick and elderberry wine (the homemade kind)
tap out SOS to a lilied high tide (find out we're tied...)
and think of all the misfortune they might yet find (..to this life)
and others they've dodged or left behind
And that's what they are since you got so giving,
held out their hands waiting to be shaken.

Brass plates and forelocks, manor gates and sweatshops
(from little acorns grow)
railings and sidings and triumphs over weaklings
(I bend saplings and they bend me)
Beatings and hidings going strong in quire stalls
and I've grown quite feint at Victorian mores
Sure the poorhouse scrubbed up well but still had to pull it down
Peel the lice paste from your skin and the gilt from your crown

So what part did you play in the latest crusade?
(Plans that relayed..)
These ventures for good (...national trust) and gottens for gain.
Who stumped up the readies, the willings and ables
(into which we poured our love..)
through canes, sticks and birches and twelve times tables
(..long after the cause left us)
It's quite a feat to make the world blush pink
To get knee deep in mud and not even flinch