And after one hundred and seventy years
We're fighting for France again!

Ah, France! And did we stand by you,

When life was made splendid with gifts and rewards ?
Ah, France! And will we deny you

In the hour of your agony, Mother of Swords?
Old Days! The wild geese are flighting,
Head to the storm as they faced it before!

For where there are Irish there's loving and fighting,
And when we stop either, it's Ireland no more!

Ireland no more!

PHARAOH AND THE SERGEANT

1897

Consider that the meritorious services of the Sergeant Instructors attached to the Egyptian Army have been inadequately acknowledged. To the excellence of their work is mainly due the great improvement that has taken place in the soldiers of H.H. the Khedive."

EXTRACT FROM Letter.

you,

SAID England unto Pharaoh, "I must make a man of
That will stand upon his feet and play the game;
That will Maxim his oppressor as a Christian ought to do,"
And she sent old Pharaoh Sergeant Whatisname.
It was not a Duke nor Earl, nor yet a Viscount-
It was not a big brass General that came;

But a man in khaki kit who could handle men a bit,
With his bedding labelled Sergeant Whatisname.

Said England unto Pharaoh, "Though at present singing small,

You shall hum a proper tune before it ends,”

And she introduced old Pharaoh to the Sergeant once for all, And left 'em in the desert making friends.

It was not a Crystal Palace nor Cathedral;
It was not a public-house of common fame;
But a piece of red-hot sand, with a palm on either hand,
And a little hut for Sergeant Whatisname.

Said England unto Pharaoh, "You've had miracles before, When Aaron struck your rivers into blood;

But if you watch the Sergeant he can show you something

more.

He's a charm for making riflemen from mud."

It was neither Hindustani, French, nor Coptics;
It was odds and ends and leavings of the same,
Translated by a stick (which is really half the trick),
And Pharaoh harked to Sergeant Whatisname.

(There were years that no one talked of; there were times of horrid doubt

There was faith and hope and whacking and despairWhile the Sergeant gave the Cautions and he combed old Pharaoh out,

And England didn't seem to know nor care.

That is England's awful way o' doing business—

She would serve her God (or Gordon) just the sameFor she thinks her Empire still is the Strand and Holborn Hill,

And she didn't think of Sergeant Whatisname.)

Said England to the Sergeant, "You can let my people go!"
(England used 'em cheap and nasty from the start),
And they entered 'em in battle on a most astonished foe—
But the Sergeant he had hardened Pharaoh's heart
Which was broke, along of all the plagues of Egypt,
Three thousand years before the Sergeant came-
And he mended it again in a little more than ten,
Till Pharaoh fought like Sergeant Whatisname.

It was wicked bad campaigning (cheap and nasty from the first),

There was heat and dust and coolie-work and sun,

There were vipers, flies, and sandstorms, there was cholera and thirst,

But Pharaoh done the best he ever done.

Down the desert, down the railway, down the river,

Like Israelites from bondage so he came,

"Tween the clouds o' dust and fire to the land of his desire,

And his Moses, it was Sergeant Whatisname!

We are eating dirt in handfuls for to save our daily bread, Which we have to buy from those that hate us most,

And we must not raise the money where the Sergeant raised the dead,

And it's wrong and bad and dangerous to boast.

But he did it on the cheap and on the quiet,

And he's not allowed to forward any claim

Though he drilled a black man white, though he made a
mummy fight,

He will still continue Sergeant Whatisname-
Private, Corporal, Colour-Sergeant, and Instructor-
But the everlasting miracle's the same!

THE LAST OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE

1891

THERE were thirty million English who talked of Eng

land's might,

There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the

They had neither food nor money, they had neither service

nor trade;

They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.

They felt that life was fleeting; they knew not that art was long,

That though they were dying of famine, they lived in deathless song.

They asked for a little money to keep the wolf from the door; And the thirty million English sent twenty pounds and four!

They laid their heads together that were scarred and lined and gray;

Keen were the Russian sabres, but want was keener than they;

And an old troop sergeant muttered, "Let us go to the man who writes

The things on Balaclava the kiddies at school recites."

They went without bands or colours, a regiment ten-file strong,

To look for the Master-singer who had crowned them all in his song;

And, waiting his servant's order, by the garden gate they

stayed,

A desolate little cluster, the last of the Light Brigade.

They strove to stand to attention, to straighten the toilbowed back;

They drilled on an empty stomach, the loose-knit files fell slack;

With stooping of weary shoulders, in garments tattered and

frayed,

They shambled into his presence, the last of the Light Brigade.

The old troop sergeant was spokesman, and "Beggin' your pardon," he said,

"You wrote o' the Light Brigade, sir. Here's all that isn't dead.

An' it's all come true what you wrote, sir, regardin' the mouth of hell;

For we're all of us nigh to the workhouse, an' we thought we'd call an' tell.

"No, thank you, we don't want food, sir; but couldn't you take an' write

A sort of 'to be continued' and 'see next page' o' the fight? We think that someone has blundered, an' couldn't you tell 'em how?

You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now."

The poor little army departed, limping and lean and forlorn. And the heart of the Master-singer grew hot with "the scorn of scorn."

And he wrote for them wonderful verses that swept the land like flame,

Till the fatted souls of the English were scourged with the thing called Shame.

O thirty million English that babble of England's might, Behold there are twenty heroes who lack their food to-night; Our children's children are lisping to "honour the charge they made-"

And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade!