RIFLEMEN—"FORM!"
(A new Volunteer Song, "in vulgar parlance," Brought up to date, after Lord Tennyson.)
["It is not going too far to say that thousands of men best fitted, physically and morally, to serve as officers or in the ranks, hold aloof from the Volunteers, because they are keenly alive to inefficiency of the average Volunteer. In vulgar parlance they look upon Volunteering as 'bad form.'"—The Times.]
There is a sound that must terribly jar
On the ears of the West in our finical day;
'Tisn't a sound of battle and war,
But of something much worse in its "vulgar" way.
Storm's warm about Volunteer "form,"
Ready, be ready against that storm!
"Form!" "Form!" Riflemen, "Form!"
Be not deaf to the sound that warns!
What? "Bad form!"—that's a prig's last plea.
Are figs of thistles? or grapes of thorns?
How can W. feel with E. C.?
"Form!" "Form!" Riflemen, "Form!"
Ready to meet "Sassiety's" storm!
Riflemen, Riflemen, shun "bad form!"
Reform your "form"! Abide nothing "low"!
Look to yon butts, and take good aims!
But better a miss, or a magpie or so,
Than that bad, bad form which "Sassiety" shames.
Storm's warm about Volunteer "form,"
Ready, be ready against that storm!
Riflemen, Riflemen, Riflemen—"Form!!!"
For "form" be ready to do or die
"Form," in "Sassiety's" name, and the Queen's!
"In vulgar parlance" "good form"'s the cry—
Though only a fribble knows what it means.
But "Form!" "Form!" Riflemen, "Form!"
Ready, be ready to meet the storm
Against the Riflemen's "shocking bad form!"