The Five Nations, Volume II

Chapter 13: SERVICE SONGS

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About This Book

A collection of poems presents varied portraits of imperial life, alternating lyric meditations and narrative sketches that examine duty, ceremony, and the costs of military service. Several pieces evoke remote landscapes and the routines of men on outposts or on the march, while others address public memory, faith, and private loss. Voices shift from colloquial to formal, mixing irony, solemnity, and exhortation, with recurring motifs of travel, comradeship, and the tension between patriotic pride and the sorrow or absurdity that accompanies conflict and empire.

SERVICE SONGS

’Tommy’ you was when it began,
But now that it is o’er
You shall be called The Service Man
’Enceforward, evermore.

Batt’ry, brigade, flank, centre, van,
Defaulter, Army corps—
From first to last The Service Man
’Enceforward, evermore.

From ’Alifax to ’Industan,
From York to Singapore—
’Orse, foot, an’ guns, The Service Man
’Enceforward, evermore!