Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/502

 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?

We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth, We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung, And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth. God help us, for we knew the worst too young ! Our shame is clean repentance for the crime that brought the sentence, Our pride it is to know no spur of pride, And the Curse of Reuben holds us till an alien turf enfolds us And we die, and none can tell Them where we died. We're poor little lambs who've lost our way, Baa! Baa! Baa! We're little black sheep who've gone astray, Baa aa aa! Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree, Damned from here to Eternity, God ha' mercy on such as we, Baa! Yah! Bah!

E'RE marchin' on relief over Injia's sunny plains, A little front o' Christmas-time an' just be'ind the Rains; Ho! get away you bullock-man, you've 'card the bugle blowed, There's a regiment a-comin' down the Grand Trunk Road;