________________________________________________
Title: The Allied Forces
Author: Abner Cosens [
More Titles by Cosens]
November, 1914
When Johnnie Bull pledges his word,
To keep it he'll gird on his sword,
While allies and sons
Will shoulder their guns;
The prince, and the peasant, and lord.
First there's bold Tommy Aitkins himself,
For a shilling a day of poor pelf,
And for love of his King,
And the fun of the thing,
He fights till he's laid on the shelf.
Brave Taffy is ready to go
As soon as the war bugles blow;
He fights like the diel,
When it comes to cold steel,
And dies with his face to the foe.
And Donald from North Inverness,
Who fights in a ballet girl's dress;
He likes a free limb,
No tight skirts for him,
Impending his march to success.
The gun runner, stern, from Belfast,
Now stands at the head of the mast;
If a tempest should come,
Or a mine or a bomb,
He will stick to his post to the last.
And Hogan, that broth of a lad,
Home Ruler from Bally-na-fad,
Writes--"I'm now in the trench
With the English and French,
And we're licking the Germans, be dad!"
The Cockney Canuck from Toronto,
Whom Maple leaves hardly stick on to,
Made haste to enlist,
To fight the mailed fist,
When Canadian born didn't want to.
From where the wide-winged albatross
Floats white 'neath the Southern Cross,
There came the swift cruisers,
And Germans are losers;
Australians want no Kaiser boss.
From sheep run, pine forest and fern,
The stalwart New Zealanders turn
To the land of their sires,
For with ancestral fires
Their bosoms in ardor still burn.
The tall, turbanned, heathen Hindoo
Is proud to be in the game too,
For the joy of his life,
Is to help in the strife
Of the sahibs, and see the war through.
The Frenchman who made wooden shoes,
While airing his Socialist views,
Deserted his bench
For the horrible trench,
As soon as he heard the war news.
The wild, woolly, grinning, Turco,
From where the fierce desert winds blow,
Will give up his life
In the thick of the strife,
And go where the good niggers go.
The versatile Jap's in the game,
Because of a treaty he came,
For old Johnnie Bull,
Will have his hands full,
The bellicose Germans to tame.
The hard riding Cossack and Russ,
At the very first sign of a fuss,
Cried--"Long live the white Czar,
We are off to the war,
No more Nihilist nonsense for us."
The bold Belgian burgher from Brussels,
Has fought in a hundred hard tussles,
And is still going strong,
Nor will it be long,
Ere the foe back to Berlin he hustles.
The hardy cantankerous Serb,
Whom even the Turk couldn't curb,
In having a go
With Emperor Joe,
Will the plans of the Kaiser disturb.
The fierce mountaineers of King Nick
Got into the ring good and quick,
They are never afraid,
For to fight is their trade,
While their wives have the living to pick.
[The end]
Abner Cosens's poem: Allied Forces
________________________________________________
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
