Читать книгу The Young Guard - Hornung Ernest William - Страница 6

I T is the story of

Ensign Joy

And the obsolete

rank withal

That I love for each gentle English

boy

Who jumped to his country's

call.

By their fire and fun, and the

deeds they've done,

I would gazette them Second to

none

Who faces a gun in Gaul!)

IT is also the story of Ermyntrude

A less appropriate name

For the dearest prig and the

prettiest prude!

But under it, all the same,

The usual consanguineous squad

Had made her an honest child

of God —

And left her to play the game.

IT was just when the grind of

the Special Reserves,

Employed upon Coast Defence,

Was getting on every Ensign's

nerves —

Sick-keen to be drafted

hence —

That they met and played tennis

and danced and sang,

The lad with the laugh and the

schoolboy slang,

The girl with the eyes intense.

 YET it wasn't for him that she

languished and sighed,

But for all of our dear deemed

youth;

And it wasn't for her, but her

sex, that he cried,

If he could but have probed

the truth !

Did she? She would none of his

hot young heart;

As khaki escort he's tall and

smart,

As lover a shade uncouth.

HE went with his draft. She

returned to her craft.

He wrote in his merry vein:

She read him aloud, and the

Studio laughed!

Ermyntrude bore the strain.

He was full of gay bloodshed and

Old Man Fritz:

His flippancy sent her friends

into fits.

Ermyntrude frowned with

pain.

HIS tales of the Sergeant who

swore so hard

Left Ermyntrude cold and

prim;

The tactless truth of the picture

jarred,

And some of his jokes were

grim.

Yet, let him but skate upon

tender ice,

And he had to write to her twice

or thrice

Before she would answer him.

YET once she sent him a