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While the Sergeant gave the Cautions, and he combed old Pharaoh out,
And England didn't look to know nor care.
That is England's awful way o' doing business;
She would serve her God or Gordon just the same;
For she thinks her Empire still is the Strand and Holborn Hill,
And she didn't think o' 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 at Firkeh on a most astonished foe—
But the Sergeant he had hardened Pharaoh's heart
That 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,
So 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 the 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!

Copyright, 1897, Rudyard Kipling