“Into our town a serjeant came With ribands all so fine, A-flaunting in his cap--alas! His bow enlisted mine!
“They taught him how to turn his toes, And stand as stiff as starch; I thought that it was love and May, But it was love and March!
“A sorry March indeed to leave The friends he might have kep’,-- No March of Intellect it was, But quite a foolish step.”
[Illustration: “THE IDES OF MARCH ARE COME!”]
“O prithee tell, good sentinel, If hereabouts he lies? I want a corpse with reddish hair, And very sweet blue eyes.”
Her sorrow on the sentinel Appear’d to deeply strike:-- “Walk in,” he said, “among the dead, And pick out which you like.”
And soon she picked out Peter Stone, Half turned into a corse; A cannon was his bolster, and His mattress was a horse.
“O Peter Stone, O Peter Stone, Lord, here has been a skrimmage; What have they done to your poor breast That used to hold my image?”
“O Patty Head, O Patty Head, You’re come to my last kissing; Before I’m set in the Gazette As wounded, dead, and missing!”
[Illustration: WAR DANCE.--THE OPENING OF THE BALL.]
“Alas! a splinter of a shell Right in my stomach sticks; French mortars don’t agree so well With stomachs as French bricks.
“This very night a merry dance At Brussels was to be;-- Instead of opening a ball, A ball has open’d me.
“Its billet every bullet has, And well it does fulfil it;-- I wish mine hadn’t come so straight, But been a ‘crooked billet.’
“And then there came a cuirassier And cut me on the chest;-- He had no pity in his heart, For he had _steel’d his breast_.
“Next thing a lancer, with his lance, Began to thrust away; I call’d for quarter, but, alas! It was not Quarter-day.
“He ran his spear right through my arm, Just here above the joint:-- O Patty dear, it was no joke, Although it had a point.
“With loss of blood I fainted off, As dead as women do-- But soon by charging over me, The _Coldstream_ brought me to.
“With kicks and cuts, and balls and blows, I throb and ache all over; I’m quite convinc’d the field of Mars Is not a field of clover!
“O why did I a soldier turn For any royal Guelph? I might have been a butcher, and In business for myself!
“O why did I the bounty take (And here he gasp’d for breath). My shillingsworth of ’list is nail’d Upon the door of death!