GENTLEMEN-RANKERS Oh, it's sweet to sweat through stables, sweet to empty kitchen slops, And it's sweet to hear the tales the troopers tell, To dance with blowzy housemaids at the regimental hops And thrash the cad who says you waltz too well. Yes, it makes you cock-a-hoop to be " Rider" to your troop, And branded with a blasted worsted spur, When you envy, O how keenly, one poor Tommy being cleanly Who blacks your boots and sometimes calls you If the home we never write to, and the oaths we never keep, And all we know most distant and most dear, Across the snoring barrack-room return to break our sleep, Can you blame us if we soak ourselves in beer? When the drunken comrade mutters and the great guard-lantern gutters And the horror of our fall is written plain, Every secret, self-revealing on the aching whitewashed ceiling, Do you wonder that we drug ourselves from pain? We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth, We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung, And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth. God help us, for we knew the worst too young! Our shame is clean repentance for the crime that brought the sentence, Our pride it is to know no spur of pride, And the Curse of Reuben holds us till an alien turf enfolds us And we die, and none can tell Them where we died. We're poor little lambs who've lost our way, Baa! Baa! Baa! We're little black sheep who've gone astray, Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree, God ha' mercy on such as we, ROUTE MARCHIN' WE'RE marchin' on relief over Injia's sunny plains, There's a regiment a-comin' down the Grand Trunk With its best foot first And the road a-sliding past, An' every bloomin' campin'-ground exactly like the last; While the Big Drum says, With 'is " rowdy-dowdy-dow!” "Kiko kissywarsti don't you hamsher argy Oh, there's them Injian temples to admire when you see, There's the peacock round the corner an' the monkey up the tree, An' there's that rummy silver grass a-wavin' in the wind, An' the old Grand Trunk a-trailin' like a rifle-sling be'ind. At half-past five's Revelly, an' our tents they down must come, Like a lot of button mushrooms when you pick 'em up at 'ome. But it's over in a minute, an' at six the column starts, While the women and the kiddies sit an' shiver in the carts. Oh, then it's open order, an' we lights our pipes an' sings, An' we talks about our rations an' a lot of other things, An' we thinks o' friends in England, an' we wonders what they're at, An' 'ow they would admire for to hear us sling the bat.1 It's none so bad o' Sunday, when you're lyin' at your ease, To watch the kites a-wheelin' round them feather 'eaded trees, For although there ain't no women, yet there ain't no barrick-yards, So the officers goes shootin' an' the men they plays at cards. 1 Language. Thomas's first and firmest conviction is that he is a profound Orientalist and a fluent speaker of Hindustani. As a matter of fact, he depends largely on the sign-language. |