Читать книгу Writ in Barracks - Wallace Edgar - Страница 7

There's risk on the ballasted roadway,

There's death on the girdered bridge,

Red ruin from sleeper to sleeper,

And wreck on the bouldered ridge.

No signal to herald my coming,

No whistle to waken the plain;

Stand clear – I am out for patrolling!

Make way for the Armoured Train!

I run not to time, nor to table,

I'm neither an 'Up' nor a 'Down,'

But 'Full speed ahead' is my order,

When skirting the enemy's town.

My mails have a backing of cordite,

My luggage is powder and shell,

With smoke-stack a-blazing I thunder,

A traveller's sample of Hell!

They have laid me a mine by a culvert,

They have loosened a bolt by a curve,

But thrice-tested steel is my muscle,

And thrice-tested brass is my nerve.

A curse for their bungling folly,

A laugh for the death-trap that fails,

A hang for the enemy's miner,

So long as I keep to the rails.

A cheer – and I pull from the township

To spy out the enemy's line;

A plunge – and I rush into darkness

As reckless of wreckage as mine.

And what if a rail has been lifted?

And what if a river's unspanned?

I fail, but I know in the failing

I strove at the Empire's command.

They were men who at Badajos conquered,

They were men who for Wellington struck,

And a Man is the Man at the Throttle,

And a Man is the Man on the Truck.

Undismayed I may go to destruction.

For I know at the end I may feel

I die with the men on the footplate,

I pass with my brothers in steel.