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Carnival Capping Songs 1917

Absent Friends

Absent Friends.

When their days are done and their course is run
In the lecture-rooms and hallways,
Where the great ships go and the wild winds blow,
Do they pass and scatter all ways.
To the gleaming feast of the lurid East,
As described by Mr. Kipling;
In their endless quest through the wakeful West,
Go the strong man and the stripling.

Chorus.
In the wild and woolly places,
Where the strangest tales are told,
You will find their friendly faces,
And perhaps the Green and Gold.
One may be a bloated banker,
Or a chap with naught to spend,
So he be from Salamanca,
He is just an Absent Friend.

Or the Hand of Fate through the Golden Gate
May direct them in their roaming,
Where the buffaloes snort when they're pinked for sporf
On the prairies of Wyoming.
Or where red deer spoors lie on Highland moors,
Is the "Sapientia Magis"
Still an honoured toast and a glorious boast
As they sit beside the haggis.

Chorus
You will see them come a-strolling
In some unsuspected land,
As you watch the ships a coaling
By a queer old foreign strand.
One may be a bloated banker,
Or a chap with naught to spend,
So he be from Salamanca,
He is just an Absent Friend.

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Not a troopship rides on the guarded tides
To the warworn lands without them.
You will find them there where the bugles blare
And the smoke hangs thick about them.
In the deathless charge up the gully's marge,
Where the echoes roll in thunder,
There the Green and the Gold may be rent and holed
But it's never down and under.

Chorus
Ask the guns of old Kum Kaleh,
Ask the guns of Neuve Chapelle,
Who was foremost in the rally,
You will like their answer well.
He may be a simple ranker,
Or a chap with stars to lend,
So he be from Salamanca
He is just an Absent Friend,

When their backs are bent and their strength is spent,
And their heads have no more hair on,
In a few brief ticks they will reach the Styx
And the jetty owned by Charon.
With the heroes bold of the days of old
You will find them intermingling;
If you stroll that way on a holiday
It will set your ears a-tingling.

Chorus.
When you hear familiar laughter,
And the same old student songs
That were hurled from roof and rafter,
In the days where youth belongs.
Be it shade of bloated banker,
Or a chap with naught to spend,
So it came from Salamanca,
It is just an Absent Friend.