Explore "Prelude" by Robert Louis Stevenson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
BY sunny market-place and street / Wherever I go my drum I beat, / And wherever I go in my coat of red / The ribbons flutter about my head.
I seek recruits for wars to come- / For slaughterless wars I beat the drum, / And the shilling I give to each new ally / Is hope to live and courage to die.
I know that new recruits shall come / Wherever I beat the sounding drum, / Till the roar of the march by country and town / Shall shake the tottering Dagons down.
For I was objectless as they / And loitering idly day by day; / But whenever I heard the recruiters come, / I left my all to follow the drum.