his bed,
And he makes it with a shovel every day.
Man is dust. If so, the Cobber has been
puddled up a treat.
On domestic sanitation he's a toff,
For he lights a fire on Sunday, bakes his sur-
face in the heat,
Then he takes a little maul, and cracks it
off.
After hanging out a winter in this Cimmerian
hole
We're forgetting sheets, and baths, and
tidy skins.
In the dark and deadly calm last night they
took us on patrol.
Seven, little fellows, thinking of their sins.
It was ours like blinded snails to prowl the
soggy, slimy night,
With a feeler pricking out at every pore
For the death that stalks in darkness, or the
blinking stab of light,
And the other trifling matters that are war.
That's the stuff to get your liver, that's the
acid on a man,
For it tries his hones, and seeks his marrow
throngh.
You have got the thought to comfort you that
life is but a span,
If Fritz squirts his loathly limelight over
you.
We got back again at daybreak. Cobber
ducked to doss and said,
From the soft, embracing mud: "No more
I'll roam.
"Oh, thank Heaven, blokes," he murmured,
"for the comforts of a bed!
Gorstruth, but ain't it good to have a
home!"
MICKIE MOLLYNOO.
A MILE-LONG panto dragon ploddin'
'opeless all the day,
Stuffed out with kits, 'n' spiked with rifles,
steamin' in its sweat,
A-heavin' down the misty road, club-footed
through the clay,
By waggons bogged 'n' buckin' guns,
the wildest welter yet,
Like 'arf creation's tenants shiftin' early
in the wet.
We're marchin' out, we dunno where, to meet
we dunno who;
But here we lights eventual, 'n' sighs 'n'
slips the kit,
'N', 'struth, the first to take us on is Mickie
Mollynoo!
A copper of the Port he was, when 'istory
was writ.
Sez I : "We're sent to face the foe, 'n', selp
me, this is It."
A shine John. Hop is Mollynoo. A mix-up
with the push
Is all his joy. One evenin' when his
baton's flyin' free
I takes a baby brick, 'n' drives it hard agin
the cush,
'N' Privit Mick is scattered out fer all the
world to see,
But not afore indelible he's put his mark on
me.
I got the signs Masonic all inlaid along me
lug
Where Molly, P.C., swiped me in them
'appy, careless days.
He's sargin' now, a vet'ran; I'm a newchum
and a mug,
'
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