“Who’ll serve the King?”

What little urchin is there never

Hath had that early scarlet fever,

Of martial trappings caught?

Trappings well call’d — because they trap

And catch full many a country chap

To go where fields are fought!

What little urchin with a rag

Hath never made a little flag

(Our plate will show the manner),

And wooed each tiny neighbor still,

Tommy or Harry, Dick or Will,

To come beneath the banner!

Just like that ancient shape of mist,

In Hamlet, crying “‘List, oh, ‘list!”

Come, who will serve the king,

And strike frog-eating Frenchmen dead,

And cut off Bonyparty’s head? —

And all that sort of thing.

So used I, when I was a boy,

To march with military toy,

And ape the soldier’s life; —

And with a whistle or a hum,

I thought myself a Duke of Drum

At least, or Earl of Fife.

With gun of tin and sword of lath,

Lord! how I walk’d in glory’s path

With regimental mates,

By sound of trump and rub-a dubs —

To ‘siege the washhouse — charge the tubs —

Or storm the garden gates.

Ah me! my retrospective soul!

As over memory’s muster-roll

I cast my eyes anew,

My former comrades all the while

Rise up before me, rank and file,

And form in dim review.

Ay, there they stand, and dress in line,

Lubbock, and Fenn, and David Vine,

And dark “Jamaeky Forde!”

And limping Wood, and “Cockey Hawes,”

Our captain always made, because

He had a real sword!

Long Lawrence, Natty Smart, and Soame,

Who said he had a gun at home,

But that was all a brag;

Ned Ryder, too, that used to sham

A prancing horse, and big Sam Lamb

That would hold up the flag!

Tom A............