Explore "Tom Taylor" by Robert Graves on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
On pay-day nights, neck-full with beer,
Old soldiers stumbling homeward here,
Homeward (still dazzled by the spark / Love kindled in some alley dark) / Young soldiers mooning in slow thought, / Start suddenly, turn about, are caught / By a dancing sound, merry as a grig, / Tom Taylor's piccolo playing jig.
Never was blown from human cheeks / Music like this, that calls and speaks / Till sots and lovers from one string / Dangle and dance in the same ring. / Tom, of your piping I've heard said / And seen -- that you can rouse the dead, / Dead-drunken men awash who lie / In stinking gutters hear your cry, / I've seen them twitch, draw breath, grope, sigh, / Heave up, sway, stand; grotesquely then / You set them dancing, these dead men.
They stamp and prance with sobbing breath, / Victims of wine or love or death, / In ragged time they jump, they shake / Their heads, sweating to overtake / The impetuous tune flying ahead. / They flounder after, with legs of lead.
Now, suddenly as it started, play / Stops, the short echo dies away, / The corpses drop, a senseless heap, / The drunk men gaze about like sheep.
Grinning, the lovers sigh and stare / Up at the broad moon hanging there, / While Tom, five fingers to his nose, / Skips off.And the last bugle blows.