Rhymes of a Red Cross Man | Page 3

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\re?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 life had but begun,?Carrion-cold out there.
Look at his prizes all in a row:?Surely a hint of fame.?Now he's finished with, -- nothing to show:?Doesn't it seem a shame??Look from the window! All you see?Was to be his one day:?Forest and furrow, lawn and lea,?And he goes and chucks it away.
Chucks it away to die in the dark:?Somebody saw him fall,?Part of him mud, part of him blood,?The rest