Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/388

204 Oh, it's sweet to sweat through stables, sweet to empty kitchen slops,

And it's sweet to hear the tales the troopers tell,

To dance with blowzy housemaids at the regimental hops,

And thrash the cad who says you waltz too well.

Yes, it makes you cock-a-hoop to be "Rider" to your troop,

And branded with a blasted worsted spur,

When you envy, Oh, how keenly, one poor Tommy being cleanly

Who blacks your boots and sometimes call you "Sir."

If the home we never write to, and the oaths we never keep,

And all we know most distant and most dear,

Across the snoring barrack-room return to break our sleep,

Can you blame us if we soak ourselves in beer?

When the drunken comrade mutters and the great guard-lantern gutters

And the horror of our fall is written plain,

Every secret, self-revealing on the aching whitewashed ceiling,

Do you wonder that we drug ourselves from pain?