‘Tis twelve years hence that this grim note was writ And buried by the hand of the Alliance ‘til from the brains of their most trusted men did River pluck it like a bouncing ball or like the shattered wheel of an ox-cart that tumbling finds its way into the ditch and sends the drover sprawling to the mud So would the men who let this secret spill Fall if the ‘verse should know the truth it tells And this I swear, that such a thing will be And thirty worlds at last will know the truth When for these hapless dead we come to speak. For divers reasons are each of you here Upon this boat I’m proud to call my home But each and ev’ry one is on my crew I know full well the price of what I ask Indeed, before the end it may take all But know that there’s no cause of greater worth For sure as I know aught, I know forsooth That they who did this will not rest for long And maybe on another shining world Or maybe on this very ground swept clean A year from now, or two, or maybe more They will swing back to this accurs’d belief That with the power of science in their hands They can reform our souls like so much clay And make us better. I hold not to that! And so I swear to you to run no more And live a’hunted or as some man’s slave Nay, forsooth, I aim to misbehave.