Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 15, Issue 3 (June 1, 1940)

“Sending ‘Em Off.”

“Sending ‘Em Off.”

There are hundreds in the station,
there are thousands in the street,
And they're listening for the pipers,
for the sound of marching feet.
The old soldiers on the platform find
their thoughts all gone astray
From their placid bourgeois present to
the time they spent away,
And the rumble of a trolley sounds
like sabots which you meet
Where the wagons bear the caption,
“Hommes quarante ou chevaux.
huit.”

The battalion clears a corner and the
cheering runs ahead
Like a bow-wave's throaty surging in
a harbour calm and dead:
And we're standing on the platform,
watching others take our place,
Mere crocks with racing-plates knocked off—too old to win a race.
Yet we, too, have had our moments—
partings tearful, pledges sweet,
By the wagons that were labelled,
“Hommes quarante ou chevaux
huit.”

But the R.T.O. comes cursing, he's a
busy man to-day,
There's a whistle and a rippling jolt,
a cheer—and they're away;
And the wife is waiting somewhere,
and we've got to mow the lawn,
While the aspidistra's languishing, unwatered, dry, forlorn.
Yes, we know the war is rotten, yet
we'd give our souls to greet
Mates of old and read the slogan,
“Hommes quarante ou chevaux
huit.”

* * *