21 quotes
But he couldn't lie if you paid him and he'd starve before he stole.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892)
Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892)
Oh the road to Mandalay
Where the flyin'-fishes play
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer
China 'crost the Bay!
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892)
For the colonel's lady an' Judy O'Grady,
Are sisters under their skins.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892)
“What are the bugles blowin' for?” said Files-on-Parade.
“To turn you out, to turn you out”, the Colour-Sergeant said.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892)
'E's all 'ot sand an' ginger when alive
An' 'e's generally shammin' when 'e's dead.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892)
So 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your 'ome in the Soudan;
You're a pore benighted 'eathen but a first-class fightin' man.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892)
'Ave you 'eard o' the Widow at Windsor
With a hairy gold crown on 'er 'ead?
She 'as ships on the foam—she 'as millions at 'ome,
An' she pays us poor beggars in red.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892)
An' I learned about women from 'er.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892)
They've taken of his buttons off an' cut his stripes away,
An' they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892)
I've taken my fun where I've found it,
An' now I must pay for my fun,
For the more you 'ave known o' the others
The less will you settle to one.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892)
I've taken my fun where I've found it;
I've rogued an' I've ranged in my time.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892)
For to admire an' for to see,
For to be'old this world so wide—
It never done no good to me,
But I can't drop it if I tried!
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892)
Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
Where there aren't no Ten Commandments, an' a man can raise a thirst.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892)
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it's “Saviour of 'is country” when the guns begin to shoot.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892)
We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth,
We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung,
And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth.
God help us, for we knew the worst too young!
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892)
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
“Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!”
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892)
And oft-times cometh our wise Lord God, master of every trade,
And tells them tales of His daily toil, of Edens newly made;
And they rise to their feet as He passes by, gentlemen unafraid.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892)
To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned,
To my brethren in their sorrow overseas,
Sings a gentleman of England cleanly bred, machinely crammed,
And a trooper of the Empress, if you please.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892)
You may talk o' gin and beer
When you're quartered safe out 'ere,
An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it;
But when it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892)