RURAL LIFE UNDER WAR CONDITIONS.
Our village errand-boy.
"Down with the Teutons!" rose the people's cry;
"Who said that England's honour was for sale?"
Myself, I hunted out the local spy,
Tore down his pole and cast him into jail.
"An English barber now," said I, "or none!
This thatch shall never fall before a Hun!"
And all was well until that fateful morn
When, truss'd for shearing in a stranger's shop,
"Be careful, please," I said, " I want it shorn
Close round the ears, but leave it long on top;"
And, thrilling with a pleasant pride of race,
I watched the fellow's homely British face.
An optimist he was. "Those German brutes,
They'll get wot for. You mark my words," he said,
And dragged great chunks of hair out by the roots,
Forgetting mine was not a German head.
"Oh, yes, they'll get it in the neck," said he
And gaily emphasized his prophecy.
Ah me, that ruthless Britisher! He scored
His parallel entrenchments round and round
My quivering scalp. "Invade us 'ere?" he roared;
"Not bloomin' likely! Not on British ground!"
His nimble scissors left a row of scars
To point the prowess of our gallant Tars.
I bore it without movement, save a start
Induc'd by one shrewd gash behind the ear.
With silent fortitude I watch'd him part
The ruin on my skull. And then a tear,
A fat, round tear, well'd up from either eye—
O traitorous tribute to the local spy!
Jules François is poet, and gallant and gay;
Jules François makes frocks in the Rue de la Paix;
Since the mobilisation Jules François's the one
That sits by the breech of a galloping gun,
In the team of a galloping gun!
When the wheatfields of August stood white on the plain
Jules François was ordered to go to Lorraine,
Since the guns would get flirting with good Mr. Krupp
And wanted Jules Francois to limber them up,
To lay and to limber them up!
The road it was dusty, the road it was long,
But there was Jules François to make you a song;
He sang them a song, and he fondled his gun,
Though I wouldn't translate it he sang it A1;
His battery thought it A1!
The morning was fresh and the morning was cool
When they stopped in an orchard two miles out of Toul,
And the grey muzzles spat through the grey muzzles' smoke,
And there was Jules François to make you a joke.
To crack his idea of a joke:—
"The road to our Paris 'tis hard as can be;
The road to that London he halts at the sea;
So, vois-tu, mon gars? 'tis as certain as sin
This wisdom that chooses the road to Berlin!"
So they follow the road to Berlin.
