Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3823/Twilight in Regent's Park
(Being a mutinous suggestion which I somehow had no time to make to the drill-instructor.)
Sergeant! Beneath the dim and misty vault
I tire of making fours with endless trouble,
And left inclines inclining to a fault.
What is this pedantry? An empty bubble.
The spirit is the thing. When you say "'Alt!"
My 'eart—I mean my heart—is at the double.
You, gazing only at the outward shell
That nothing of this secret fire divulges,
See only raw civilians, heaped pell-mell,
Having the kind of chest that peace indulges;
Viewed from one end our lines are like a swell
On the deep ocean, full of kinks and bulges.
You bid us wheel. At once ensues a rout
That no hussar could compass with his sabre;
The man in evening dress is much too stout,
He seems to draw his breath with obvious labour,
Whilst I—I beg your pardon, Right about—
Of course I bumped into my left-hand neighbour.
But take (as I observed) the fire beneath;
If ever foe should leap the shining margent
That laps our island like a liquid wreath
Then you would see us. Shimmering and argent,
"Out bay'nets!" we would snatch 'em from the sheaths;
No 'shunning in that day, I think, O Sergeant.
Meanwhile we want a foretaste of the joy
That so much tedious tramping merely stifles;
We want to fall upon our—well deploy
And less of "Stand at ease" and fruitless trifles;
Der Tag will come (we whisper it with coy
Half-bated murmurings), when we have rifles
And uniforms. I want a uniform,
Even if not of khaki's steadfast fibre,
To make the bright-eyed maidens' hearts more warm
And still the mockings of the street-boy giber;
Meanwhile, I say, why not deploy and storm
The sacred trenches of the Zoo-subscriber?
The hour, the place invite. While here we stake
Our country's weal on nugatory follies,
What are these screams of insolence that wake
The bosky silence with perpetual volleys?
Give us the word to charge and let us take
Yon outpost of the Eagles with our brollies.