Sequence. in Parenthesis

Men marching …

Men marched, they kept equal step …

Men marched, they had been nurtured together.

Goodbye Dolly, I must leave you, though it breaks my heart to go.

Lance-Corporal Lewis sings where he walks, yet in a low voice, because of the Disciplines of the Wars.

Something tells me I am needed at the front to fight the foe.

He sings of the hills about Jerusalem,

and of David of the White Stone.

‘Bring me my harp,’ was David’s last sigh.

Men marching …

And now at another forked-way, voices, and heavy material in contact, as if a gardener made firm a sloping pleasance; and someone coughs restrainedly and someone sings freely:

O dear, what can the matter be?

O dear, what can the matter be?

O dear, what can the matter be?

And from these also, the file moves on; the sound of them and his singing, like some unexpected benignity you come on at a street-bend.

Johnny’s so long at the fair.

Men marching …

Old Adams, Usk, sits stark, he already regrets his sixty-two years … He grips more tightly the cold band of his sling-swivel; he’d known more sodden, darker ways, below the Old Working. He shifts his failing flanks along the clammy slats, he settles next his lance-jack, he joins that muted song; together they sing low of the little cauldron, together they commemorate Joni bach.

Mae bys Meri-Ann wedi brifo,

A Dafydd y gwas ddim yn iach.

Mae’r baban yn y crud yn crio,

A’r gath wedi sgrapo Joni bach.

Sosban Fach yn berwi ar y tân,

Sosban Fawr yn berwi ar y llawr,

A’r gath wedi sgrapo Joni bach.

Men marching …

His eyes turned again to where the wood thinned to separate broken trees; to where great strippings-off hanged from tenuous fibres swaying, whitened to decay—as swung immolations for the northern Cybele.

The hanged, the offerant: himself to himself on the tree … And one played on an accordion:

Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen

Aus einer Wurzel zart …

Since Boniface once walked in Odin’s wood.

Two men in the traverse mouth-organ’d; four men took up that song.

Casey Jones mounted to the cabin.

Casey Jones with his orders in his hand.

Casey Jones mounted to the cabin

And took his farewell trip to the Promised Land.

Und hat ein Blümlein bracht

Mitten im kalten Winter,

Wohl zu der halben Nacht.

Men marching …

I am the Single Horn thrusting by night-stream margin in Helyon.

Cripes-a-mighty-strike-me-stone-cold—you don’t say. Where’s that birth-mark, young ’un.

Wot the Melchizzydix!—and still fading—jump to it Rotherhithe.

Old soldiers never die,

Never die, never die,

Old soldiers never die;

They simply fade away.

Roll on Duration—

we’re drawing pith-helmets for the Macedonian war—they camel-corps won’t have platoon drill anyway—deux grenadine ma’m’selle an one beer—this is mine, Alphonso—here’s the lucky Alphonso, the genuine lionheart, back in time for the ’bus to Jaffa and the Blackamoor delectations.

If I catch Alphonso Spagoni the Toreador,

He swayed his pelvis like a corner-boy.

With a mighty swipe I will dislocate his bloody jaw!

A half-platoon in chorus can fa re barbarously:

He shall die! He shall die!

With a mighty swipe I will dislocate his bloody jaw!

He reverts to the discipline of prose.

Men marching …

Oh, I do like a s’nice s’mince s’pie!

Oh, I do like a s’nice s’mince s’pie!

The other companies followed at their proper interval, singing, through the May night shower:

Don’t like lamb, ham or jam,

And I don’t like roly-poly.

Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,

With the cross of Jesus going on before!

Men marching …

Sped nimbly perched: bright petasos canted on bonny brow between the midden and the byre farm-flutter at the spokes downy scatters now—to cock-a-diddle-dow to:

I don’t want to die, I want to go home.

Men marching …

Till Sergeant Cherbury warned them to put a sock in it.

Riders on pale horses loosed and vials irreparably broken an’ Wat price bleedin’ Glory Glory Hallelujah and the Royal Welsh sing:

Jesu, lover of my soul,

Let me to thy bosom fly.

We’re here because we’re here because

We’re here because we’re here;

We’re here because we’re here because

We’re here because we’re here.

Gododdin I demand thy support. It is our duty to sing: a meeting place has been found.

Men marching … nurtured together.