Rhymes of a Red Cross Man.

by Robert W. Service.

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 sc.r.a.ps 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 sc.r.a.ps 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 G.o.d'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 h.e.l.l 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 d.i.c.k he's dead, Somewhere in France, they say: d.i.c.k with his rapture of song and sun, d.i.c.k of the yellow hair, d.i.c.ky 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 of him--not at all.

And yet I'll bet he was never afraid, And he went as the best of 'em go, For his hand was clenched on his broken blade, And his face was turned to the foe.

And I called him a fool ... oh how blind was I!

And the cup of my grief's abrim.

Will Glory o' England ever die So long as we've lads like him?

So long as we've fond and fearless fools, Who, spurning fortune and fame, Turn out with the rallying cry of their schools, Just bent on playing the game.

A fool! Ah no! He was more than wise.

His was the proudest part.

He died with the glory of faith in his eyes, And the glory of love in his heart.

And though there's never a grave to tell, Nor a cross to mark his fall, Thank G.o.d! we know that he "batted well"

In the last great Game of all.

The Volunteer

Sez I: My Country calls? Well, let it call.

I grins perlitely and declines wiv thanks.

Go, let 'em plaster every blighted wall, 'Ere's _ONE_ they don't stampede into the ranks.

Them politicians with their greasy ways; Them empire-grabbers--fight for 'em? No fear!

I've seen this mess a-comin' from the days Of Algyserious and Aggydear: I've felt me pa.s.sion rise and swell, But ... wot the 'ell, Bill? Wot the 'ell?

Sez I: My Country? Mine? I likes their cheek.

Me mud-bespattered by the cars they drive, Wot makes my measly thirty bob a week, And sweats red blood to keep meself alive!

Fight for the right to slave that they may spend, Them in their mansions, me 'ere in my slum?

No, let 'em fight wot's something to defend: But me, I've nothin'--let the Kaiser come.

And so I cusses 'ard and well, But ... wot the 'ell, Bill? Wot the 'ell?

Sez I: If they would do the decent thing, And shield the missis and the little 'uns, Why, even _I_ might shout "G.o.d save the King", And face the chances of them 'ungry guns.

But we've got three, another on the way; It's that wot makes me snarl and set me jor: The wife and nippers, wot of 'em, I say, If I gets knocked out in this blasted war?