When all the masses are daily fed
Upon sweet peas and Standard bread,
It is perfectly safe to prophesy
The end of the world will soon be nigh.
THE DRAFT.
So it is done—the calling and the counting,
The solemn mustering, the ritual care,
The fevered messages, the tempers mounting
For some old rogue who never can be there;
No more the Adjutant explodes and splutter.
Because the rifles are too few by four;
No longer now the Quartermaster mutters
It's time that bedding was returned to store;
But all is ship-shape, and, to cut it fine,
The draft has now departed down the line.
These were the men that we have trained from tyros;
We took them in, we dressed them for the wars;
For us they first arranged themselves in wry rows,
For us they formed their first unlovely fours;
We taught them cleanliness (by easy stages)
And cursed them daily by platoons and squads,
And they, unmoved by months of mimic rages,
Regarded us—most properly—as gods:
They were our very own and, being such,
For all our blasphemy we loved them much.
But strangers now will have them in their keeping,
Unfeeling folk who understand them ill,
Nor know what energies, what fires unsleeping
Inform the frames that seem so stupid still;
Who'll share their struggles and curtail their slumbers,
And get conceited when the men do well,
Nor think of us who brought them up by numbers,
Save in the seasons when they don't excel.
And then they'll say, "The fellows should be strafed
Whoever trained this blooming awful draft."
But not the men; they will not slight so early
The mild-eyed masters who reviled them first,
But, mindful still of marches out to Shirley,
Wet walks at Hayes and romps round Chislehurst;
When in some ditch, untroubled yet though thinner,
They talk old days and feelingly refer
Over their bully to the Depot dinner,
They'll speak (I hope) about "the officer,"
And say at least, as Sub-Lieutenants go,
He was the most intelligent they know.