Explore "Gentlemen-Rankers" by Rudyard Kipling on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned, / To my brethren in their sorrow overseas, / Sings a gentleman of England cleanly bred, machinely crammed, / And a trooper of the Empress, if you please. / Yea, a trooper of the forces who has run his own six horses, / And faith he went the pace and went it blind, / And the world was more than kin while he held the ready tin, / But to-day the Sergeant's something less than kind. / 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!
Oh, it's sweet to sweat through stables, sweet to empty kitchen slops, / And it's sweet to hear the tales the troopers tell, / To dance with blowzy housemaids at the regimental hops / And thrash the cad who says you waltz too well. / Yes, it makes you cock-a-hoop to be "Rider" to your troop, / And branded with a blasted worsted spur, / When you envy, O how keenly, one poor Tommy being cleanly / Who blacks your boots and sometimes calls you "Sir".