APOLOGY OF A WARRIOR MINSTREL.
Lucasta, don't be cruel
If my bewildered lyre
Amidst such stores of fuel
Seems reft of sacred fire.
For if you know what France is
You know how it is hard
To blend, as in romances,
The warrior with the bard.
The troubadours of story
Knew no such woes as we,
Whose hopes of martial glory
Are built on F.A.T.[1]
With songs and swords and horses
They learned their careless rôle,
While we are sent on courses
That starve the poet's soul.
With gay anticipations
They feasted ere a fight,
But we in calculations
Wear out the chilly night.
And if some hour of leisure
Permits a lyric mood
My wretched Muse takes pleasure
In nothing else but food.
Thus when I am returning
Ice-cold from some O.P.,
And in the East is burning
Aurora's heraldry,
That spark she fails to waken
With which of yore I glowed,
Who, fain of eggs and bacon,
Tramp ravening down the road,
Aware, with self-despising,
Which interests me most—
The silvery mists a-rising
Or marmalade and toast.
Such are the War-bard's passions—
Rank seedlings of a time
That chokes with maths and rations
The bursting buds of rhyme.
Footnote 1: Field Artillery Training. [(return)]