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    Rhymes of a Red Cross Man (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)
    Rhymes of a Red Cross Man (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)
    Rhymes of a Red Cross Man (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)
    Ebook145 pages1 hour

    Rhymes of a Red Cross Man (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

    By Robert W Service

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    About this ebook

    Based on Robert Service’s experiences as a Red Cross ambulance driver in France during World War I, this moving collection of poems eloquently captures the patriotism, hardship, and death experienced by the soldiers, as well as their love of home, family, and their fellow soldiers.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBarnes & Noble
    Release dateFeb 15, 2011
    ISBN9781411437296
    Rhymes of a Red Cross Man (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

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      Book preview

      Rhymes of a Red Cross Man (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) - Robert W Service

      RHYMES OF A RED CROSS MAN

      ROBERT W. SERVICE

      This 2011 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

      Barnes & Noble, Inc.

      122 Fifth Avenue

      New York, NY 10011

      ISBN: 978-1-4114-3729-6

      To the Memory of

      MY BROTHER,

      LIEUTENANT ALBERT SERVICE

      CANADIAN INFANTRY

      KILLED IN ACTION, FRANCE

      August 1916.

      CONTENTS

      FOREWORD

      THE CALL

      THE FOOL

      THE VOLUNTEER

      THE CONVALESCENT

      THE MAN FROM ATHABASKA

      THE RED RETREAT

      THE HAGGIS OF PRIVATE MC PHEE

      THE LARK

      THE ODYSSEY OF ’ERBERT ’IGGINS

      A SONG OF WINTER WEATHER

      TIPPERARY DAYS

      FLEURETTE

      FUNK

      OUR HERO

      MY MATE

      MILKING TIME

      YOUNG FELLOW MY LAD

      A SONG OF THE SANDBAGS

      ON THE WIRE

      BILL’S GRAVE

      JEAN DESPREZ

      GOING HOME

      COCOTTE

      MY BAY’NIT

      CARRY ON!

      OVER THE PARAPET

      THE BALLAD OF SOULFUL SAM

      ONLY A BOCHE

      PILGRIMS

      MY PRISONER

      TRI-COLOUR

      A POT OF TEA

      THE REVELATION

      GRAND-PERE

      SON

      THE BLACK DUDEEN

      THE LITTLE PIOU-PIOU

      BILL THE BOMBER

      THE WHISTLE OF SANDY MCGRAW

      THE STRETCHER-BEARER

      WOUNDED

      FAITH

      THE COWARD

      MISSIS MORIARTY’S BOY

      MY FOE

      MY JOB

      THE SONG OF THE PACIFIST

      THE TWINS

      THE SONG OF THE SOLDIER-BORN

      AFTERNOON TEA

      THE MOURNERS

      L’ENVOI

      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 scraps 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 fools of poising light,

      With flowers of flame festoon the night.

      Ah me! by what dark ways of wrong

      I’ve cheered my heart with scraps 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 God’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 hell 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 tonight;

      There will be wailing and weeping tonight;

      Death’s red sickle is reaping tonight:

      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 Dick he’s dead,

      Somewhere in France, they say:

      Dick with his rapture of song and sun,

      Dick of the yellow hair,

      Dicky 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 God! 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 with 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 passion 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,

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