| |
| 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, | 5 |
| 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! | 10 |
| 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, | 15 |
| 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. | 20 |
| 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, | 25 |
| 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, | 30 |
| 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. | 35 |
| 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. | 40 |
| 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, | 45 |
| Damned from here to Eternity, | |
| God ha’ mercy on such as we, | |
| Baa! Yah! Bah! | |
| |
