Hello, Soldier! | Page 2

black upon the
bitter earth.
So we know what's calling, Billy. 'Tis the
spirit of our race,?And its stir is in your pulses, and its light is
on your face?As you march with clipping boot-heels
through the piping, howling town?To uphold the land we live in, and to pull a
tyrant down.
Thou his lines are none too level,
And he's not a whale for style,?And he's swanking like the devil
When the women wave and smile?He will answer with a rifle,
Trim and true from stuck to bore,?When the comrades sit and stifle
In the smoking pit of war.
AS THE TROOP WENT THROUGH
I HEARD this day, as I may no more,?The world's heart throb at my workshop door.?The sun was keen, and the day was still;
The township drowsed in, a haze of heat.?A stir far off on the sleepy hill,
The measured beat of their buoyant feet,
And the lilt and thrum?Of a little drum,?The song they sang in a cadence low,?The piping note of a piccolo.
The township woke, and the doors flew wide;?The women trotted their boys beside.?Across the bridge on a single heel
The soldiers came in a golden glow,?With throb of song and the chink of steel,
The gallant crow of the piccolo.
Good and brown they were,?And their arms swung bare.?Their fine young faces revived in me?A boyhood's vision of chivalry.
The lean, hard regiment tramping down,?Bushies, miners and boys from town.?From 'mid the watchers the road along
One fell in line with the khaki men.?He took the stride, and he caught their song,
And Steve went then, and Meneer, and Ben,
Long Dave McCree,?And the Weavers three,?All whisked away by the "Come! Come! Come!"?The lusty surge of the vaunting drum.
I swore a prayer for each soldier lad.?He was the son that might have had;?The tall, bold boy who was never mine,
All brave with dust that the eyes laughed through,?His shoulders square, and his chin in line,
Was marching too with the gallant few.
Passed the muffled beat?Of their swanking feet,?The swell of drum, the exulting crow,?The wild-bird note of the piccolo.
They dipped away in the listless trees;?A mother wept on her beaded knees?For sons gone out to the long war's end;
But more than mother or man wept I?Who had no son in the world to send.
The hour lagged by, and drifting high?Came the fitful hum?Of the little drum,?And faint, but still with an ardent flow,?The pibroch, call of the piccolo.
MARSHAL NEIGH, V.C.
HE came from tumbled country past the
humps of Buffalo?Where the snow sits on the mountain 'n' the
Summer aches below.?He'd a silly name like Archie. Squattin'
sullen on the ship,?He knew nex' to holy nothin' through the gorforsaken
trip.
No thoughts he had of women, no refreshin'
talk of beer;?If he'd battled, loved, or suffered vital facts
did not appear;?But the parsons and the poets couldn't teach
him to discourse?When it come to pokin' guyver at a pore,
deluded horse.
If nags got sour 'n' kicked agin the rules of
things at sea,?Artie argued matters with 'em, 'n' he'd kid
'em up a tree.?"Here's a pony got hystericks. Pipe the word
for Privit Rowe,"?The Sargint yapped, 'n' all the ship came
cluckin' to the show.
He'd chat him confidential, 'n' he'd pet 'n'
paw the moke;?He'd tickle him, 'n' flatter him, 'n' try him
with a joke;?'N' presently that neddy sobers up, 'n' sez
"Ive course,?Since you puts it that way, cobber, I will be
a better horse."
There was one pertickler whaler, known
aboard ez Marshal Neigh,?Whose monkey tricks with Privit Rowe was
better than a play.?He'd done stunts in someone's circus, 'n' he
loved a merry bout,?Whirlin' in to bust his boiler, or to kick
the bottom out.
Rowe he sez: "Well, there's an idjit! Oh,
yes, let her whiz, you beauty!?Where's yer 'orse sense, little feller? Where's
yer bloomin' sense iv duty??Well, you orter serve yer country!" Then
there'd come a painful hush,?'N' that nag would drop his head-piece, 'n', so
'elp me cat, he'd blush.
We was heaped ashore be Suez, rifle, horse,
'n' man, 'n' tent,?Where the land is sand, the water, 'n' the
gory firmament.?We had intervals iv longin', we had sweaty
spells of work?In the ash-pit iv Gehenner, dumbly waitin'
fer the Turk.
We goes driftin' on the desert, nothin' doin',
nothin' said,?Till we get to think we're nowhere, 'n' arf
fancy we are dead,?'N' the only 'uman interest on the red horizon'
s brim?Is Marshal Neigh's queer faney fer the lad
that straddles him.
Plain-livin's nearly, bored us stiff. The Major
calls on Rowe?To devise an entertainment. What his
charger doesn't know?Isn't in the regulations. Him 'n' Rowe is
brothers met,?'N' that horse's sense iv humor is the oddest
fancy yet.
But the Turk arrives one mornin' on the outer
edge iv space.?From back iv things his guns is floppin' kegs
about the place,?'N' Privit Artie Rowe along with others iv
the force?Goes pig-rootin' inter battle, holdin' converse
with his horse.
Little Abdul's quite a fighter, 'n' he mixes it
with skill;?But the Anzacs have him snouted,, 'n', oh,
ma, he's feelin' ill.?They wake the all-fired desert, 'n' the land for
ever dead?Is alive 'n' fairly creepin', and the skies are
droppin' lead.
When they've got the Ot'man goin', little
gaudy hunts