By Rudyard Kipling
This is best known for the parts that were borrowed in the Whiffenpoof Song, but like most of Kipling's poetry, it really grabs you. Okay, it grabs me. It's not Ezra Pound, God knows, but the man had a great hand with the language, didn't he?
Billy Bragg borrows from it as well, in his "Island of No Return": "Me and the corporal out on a spree / Damned from here to eternity..." Bragg has also recorded Blake's "Jerusalem". He's cool.
To the legion of the lost ones, to
the cohort of the damned,
To
my brethren in their sorrow overseas,
Sings a
gentleman of
England cleanly bred, machinely crammed,
And
a trooper of the Empress, if you please.
Yes, a
trooper of the forces who has run his own six horses,
And faith he
went the pace and went it blind,
And the world was more than kin while he held the ready tin,
But to-day the Sergeant's something less than kind.
We're poor little lambs who've lost our way,
Baa! Baa! Baa!
We're little
black sheep who've
gone astray,
Baa--aa--aa!
Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,
Damned from here to Eternity,
God ha' mercy on such as we,
Baa! Yah! Bah!
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 living cleanly
Who
blacks your boots and sometimes calls you "Sir".
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
white-washed 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,
Baa--aa--aa!
Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,
Damned from here to Eternity,
God ha' mercy on such as we,
Baa! Yah! Bah!