Rhymes of a Red Cross Man | Page 3

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Rhymes of a Red Cross Man

by Robert W. Service [British-born Canadian Poet -- 1874-1958.]
[Note on text: Italicized stanzas are indented 5 spaces.
Italicized
words and phrases are capitalized.
Lines longer than 77 characters are
broken according to metre, and the continuation is indented two spaces
from the previous line. Stanzas that are italicized AND indented are
indented 10 spaces. Due to numerous French words and phrases in this
particular text, and the importance of accents to pronunciation, accents
are marked, using these characters (/\,^) AFTER each letter they
accompany. In two cases (me^le/e & cha^teau) the words have worked
their way into the English language, and the accents are omitted.]
[This etext has been transcribed from a New York edition of 1916.
Some very minor corrections have been made.]
Rhymes of a Red Cross Man
by Robert W. Service
Author of "The Spell of the Yukon", "Ballads of a Cheechako",
"Rhymes of a Rolling Stone", etc.
| |
--+---------------------------+--
| To the Memory of |
| My Brother,
|
| LIEUTENANT ALBERT SERVICE |
| Canadian Infantry |
|
Killed in Action, France |
| August, 1916. |

--+---------------------------+--
| |
Contents
Foreword
The Call
The Fool
The Volunteer
The Convalescent

The Man from Athabaska
The Red Retreat
The Haggis of Private
McPhee
The Lark
The Odyssey of 'Erbert 'Iggins
A Song of
Winter Weather
Tipperary Days
Fleurette
Funk
Our Hero
My
Mate
Milking Time
Young Fellow My Lad
A Song of the
Sandbags
On the Wire
Bill's Grave
Jean Desprez
Going Home

Cocotte
My Bay'nit
Carry On!
Over the Parapet
The Ballad
of Soulful Sam
Only a Boche
Pilgrims
My Prisoner
Tri-colour

A Pot of Tea
The Revelation
Grand-pe
e
Son
The Black

Dudeen
The Little Piou-piou
Bill the Bomber
The Whistle of
Sandy McGraw
The Stretcher-Bearer
Wounded
Faith
The
Coward
Missis Moriarty's Boy
My Foe
My Job
The Song of the
Pacifist
The Twins
The Song of the Soldier-born
Afternoon Tea

The Mourners
L'Envoi
Foreword
I've tinkered at my bits of rhymes
In weary, woeful, waiting times;

In doleful hours of battle-din,
Ere yet they brought the wounded in;

Through vigils of the fateful night,
In lousy barns by candle-light;

In dug-outs, sagging and aflood,
On stretchers stiff and bleared with
blood;
By ragged grove, by ruined road,
By hearths accurst where
Love abode;
By broken altars, blackened shrines
I've tinkered at my
bits of rhymes.
I've solaced me with scraps of song
The desolated ways along:

Through sickly fields all shrapnel-sown,
And meadows reaped by
death alone;
By blazing cross and splintered spire,
By headless
Virgin in the mire;
By gardens gashed amid their bloom,
By gutted
grave, by shattered tomb;
Beside the dying and the dead,
Where
rocket green and rocket red,
In trembling pools of poising light,

With flowers of flame festoon the night.
Ah me! by what dark ways
of wrong
I've cheered my heart with scraps of song.
So here's my sheaf of war-won verse,
And some is bad, and some is
worse.
And if at times I curse a bit,

You needn't read that part of it;

For through it all like horror runs
The red resentment of the guns.

And you yourself would mutter when
You took the things that
once were men,
And sped them through that zone of hate
To where
the dripping surgeons wait;
And wonder too if in God's sight
War
ever, ever can be right.
Yet may it not be, crime and war
But effort misdirected are?
And if

there's good in war and crime,
There may be in my bits of rhyme,

My songs from out the slaughter mill:
So take or leave them as you
will.
The Call
(France, August first, 1914)
Far and near, high and clear,
Hark to the call of War!
Over the
gorse and the golden dells,
Ringing and swinging of clamorous bells,

Praying and saying of wild farewells:
War! War! War!
High and low, all must go:
Hark to the shout of War!
Leave to the
women the harvest yield;
Gird ye, men, for the sinister field;
A
sabre instead of a scythe to wield:
War! Red War!
Rich and poor, lord and boor,
Hark to the blast of War!
Tinker and
tailor and millionaire,
Actor in triumph and priest in prayer,

Comrades now in the hell out there,
Sweep to the fire of War!
Prince and page, sot and sage,
Hark to the roar of War!
Poet,
professor and circus clown,
Chimney-sweeper and fop o' the town,

Into the pot and be melted down:
Into the pot of War!
Women all, hear the call,
The pitiless call of War!
Look your last
on your dearest ones,
Brothers and husbands, fathers, sons:
Swift
they go to the ravenous guns,
The gluttonous guns of War.

Everywhere thrill the air
The maniac bells of War.
There will be
little of sleeping to-night;
There will be wailing and weeping to-night;

Death's red sickle is reaping to-night:
War! War! War!
The Fool
"But it isn't playing the game," he said,
And he slammed his books
away;
"The Latin and Greek I've got in my head
Will do for a duller
day."
"Rubbish!" I cried; "The bugle's call
Isn't for lads from
school."
D'ye think he'd listen? Oh, not at all:
So I called him a fool,
a fool.
Now there's his dog by his empty bed,
And the flute he used to play,

And his favourite bat . . . but Dick he's dead,
Somewhere in France,
they say:
Dick with his rapture of song and sun,
Dick of the yellow
hair,
Dicky whose