Edward Cracroft Lefroy: His Life and Poems including a Reprint of Echoes from Theocritus: By Wilfred Austin Gill: With a Critical Estimate of the Sonnets by the late John Addington Symonds |
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 | Edward Cracroft Lefroy: His Life and Poems |  |
147
XCIX
RATAPLAN
“O Rataplan! It is a merry note,
And, mother, I'm for 'listing in the morn;”
“And would ye, son, to wear a scarlet coat,
Go leave your mother's latter age forlorn?”
“O mother, I am sick of sheep and goat,
Fat cattle, and the reaping of the corn;
I long to see the British colours float;
For glory, glory, glory, was I born!”
She saw him march. It was a gallant sight.
She blest herself, and praised him for a man.
And straight he hurried to the bitter fight,
And found a bullet in the drear Soudan.
They dug a shallow grave—'twas all they might;
And that's the end of glory. Rataplan!
April 1891.
| Edward Cracroft Lefroy: His Life and Poems | |