complete
a sudden rout,
Or in fire and smoke and fury some brave
regiment goes out,
War is cruel, Bill, and ugly. But full well
you know the rest,
Yet your heart is for the battle, and your face
is to the west.
For if war is beastly, Billy, you can picture
something worse--
There's the wrecking of an empire, and its
broken people's curse;
There are nations reft of freedom, and of hope
and kindly mirth,
And the shadow of an evil 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'

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