WE’VE rode and fought and ate and drunk as rations come to hand, | |
| Together for a year and more around this stinkin’ land: | |
| Now you are goin’ home again, but we must see it through. | |
| We needn’t tell we liked you well. Good-bye—good luck to you! | |
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| You ’ad no special call to come, and so you doubled out, | 5 |
| And learned us how to camp and cook an’ steal a horse and scout. | |
| Whatever game we fancied most, you joyful played it too, | |
| And rather better on the whole. Good-bye—good luck to you! | |
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| There is n’t much we ’ave n’t shared, since Kruger cut and run, | |
| The same old work, the same old skoff 1 the same old dust and sun; | 10 |
| The same old chance that laid us out, or winked an’ let us through; | |
| The same old Life, the same old Death. Good-bye—good luck to you! | |
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| Our blood ’as truly mixed with yours—all down the Red Cross train. | |
| We’ve bit the same thermometer in Bloeming-typhoidtein. | |
| We’ve ’ad the same old temp’rature—the same relapses too, | 15 |
| The same old saw-backed fever-chart. Good-bye—good luck to you! | |
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| But ’t was n’t merely this an’ that (which all the world may know), | |
| ’Twas how you talked an’ looked at things which made us like you so. | |
| All independent, queer an’ odd, but most amazin’ new, | |
| My word! you shook us up to rights. Good-bye—good luck to you! | 20 |
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| Think o’ the stories round the fire, the tales along the trek— | |
| O’ Calgary an’ Wellin’ton, an’ Sydney and Quebec; | |
| Of mine an’ farm, an’ ranch an’ run, an’ moose an’ cariboo, | |
| An’ parrots peckin’ lambs to death! Good-bye—good luck to you! | |
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| We’ve seen your ’ome by word o’ mouth, we’ve watched your rivers shine, | 25 |
| We’ve ’eard your bloomin’ forests blow of eucalip’ and pine; | |
| Your young, gay countries north and south, we feel we own ’em too, | |
| For they was made by rank an’ file. Good-bye—good luck to you! | |
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| We’ll never read the papers now without inquirin’ first | |
| For word from all those friendly dorps where you was born an’ nursed. | 30 |
| Why, Dawson, Galle, an’ Montreal—Port Darwin—Timaru, | |
| They’re only just across the road! Good-bye—good luck to you! | |
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| Good-bye!—So-long! Don’t lose yourselves—nor us, nor all kind friends, | |
| But tell the girls your side the drift we’re comin’—when it ends! | |
| Good-bye, you bloomin’ Atlases! You’ve taught us somethin’ new: | 35 |
| The world’s no bigger than a kraal. Good-bye—good luck to you! | |
