Canto The Third
The war saw the voting franchise expanded,
Though only in theory, since the law demanded
That all should obey the high commissioner’s will;
But he had stayed long in Malta, and feelings were ill.
He tried giving them health care, but it wasn’t enough,
He sent diggers to Egypt, but no one would laugh.
Over thirty months after the war had ended
The people rebelled and his office upended.
With the army in Malta, in horrible state,
The rebels had an easy enough time to instate
A proper democracy – the Brits were expelled,
And the bells all announced the protectorate’s knell.
But their influence lingered in other abodes,
And their favourite faction won most of the votes.
An alliance was granted, while the army-in-exile
From Malta returned to its paternal isles.
What followed was one of the craziest times
When logic was put on a pedestal high,
While riots and anger seethed through the streets,
Forcing reforms, so the crowds to appease.
Cholera then came and ravaged the land,
While economists struggled to come up with funds.
But slowly they gathered enough for some ships
A monitor first, then a faster warship.
The first was then named after Corfu’s dear son,
The Count Kapodistrias, once Russia’s right hand,
Reformer of Switzerland, though sadly demised,
When the dangers of Greece he so failed to surmise.
The second took after the Old Man of Morea,
Kolokotronis, once a brigadier
In Zante of British rule – he then went to Greece
Where he led the rebellion that was won with no ease.
But the people were restless, with exhaustion still high,
With workers and capitalists poised for a fight,
The Communist party arose in November,
But the diggers in Egypt brought some news to remember.
The anarchists struck in ’78,
An armed insurrection in Corfu they staged,
But their hearts weren’t much in it and soon they dissolved
When they saw that the government would not quickly fold.
With that movement, an age of high militancy ended;
Expressionist art a new reality rendered,
While just in October of 1880
War exhaustion reached zero, and the government could breathe.
The legacy of those two remarkable decades
Was culture galore, a more liberal age,
True independence, and gradually means
That gave certain hopes of expansionist dreams.