Wednesday, Jan. 04, 2006 - 1:04 p.m.

Whiffenpoof song

Gentlemen-Rankers
by Rudyard Kipling.

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.
Yea, a trooper of the forces who has run his own six horses,
And faith he went the pace and went it blind,
And the world was more than kin while he held the ready tin,
But to-day the Sergeant's something less than kind.
We're poor little lambs who've lost our way,
Baa! Baa! Baa!
We're little black sheep who've gone astray,
Baa--aa--aa!
Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,
Damned from here to Eternity,
God ha' mercy on such as we,
Baa! Yah! Bah!

Oh, it's sweet to sweat through stables, sweet to empty kitchen slops,
And it's sweet to hear the tales the troopers tell,
To dance with blowzy housemaids at the regimental hops
And thrash the cad who says you waltz too well.
Yes, it makes you cock-a-hoop to be "Rider" to your troop,
And branded with a blasted worsted spur,
When you envy, O how keenly, one poor Tommy being cleanly
Who blacks your boots and sometimes calls you "Sir".

If the home we never write to, and the oaths we never keep,
And all we know most distant and most dear,
Across the snoring barrack-room return to break our sleep,
Can you blame us if we soak ourselves in beer?
When the drunken comrade mutters and the great guard-lantern gutters
And the horror of our fall is written plain,
Every secret, self-revealing on the aching white-washed ceiling,
Do you wonder that we drug ourselves from pain?

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!
Our shame is clean repentance for the crime that brought the sentence,
Our pride it is to know no spur of pride,
And the Curse of Reuben holds us till an alien turf enfolds us
And we die, and none can tell Them where we died.
We're poor little lambs who've lost our way,
Baa! Baa! Baa!
We're little black sheep who've gone astray,
Baa--aa--aa!
Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,
Damned from here to Eternity,
God ha' mercy on such as we,
Baa! Yah! Bah!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've known parts of this song since I was young, but never knew it was written by Rudyard Kipling. If I thought about an author at all, I pictured an Easterner, probably Ivy League, and placed in the Roaring 20's. (Later--well, I was partly right, the Whiffenpoof Song was a parody of Kipling's poem above, created in America)

What brought it to my attention again was this excerpt:

"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!"

I just read it recently, after having pondered why our nation's young people, even Christian ones, seem so jaded. My conclusion, reached before running into the poem again, was that they had been exposed to the evil in the World much too young, through the entertainment industry. Their innocence had been tainted long before they could even understand the festering poison to which they had been exposed.

Finding the Kipling excerpt, and being hit by the phrase "knew the worst too young" just reinforced my conclusions.

It's heartbreaking to realize that our great country is at the same place Kipling's was. His great British Empire was dying, and so is our American one. But...."If My people, who are called by My Name, will humble themselves and pray...I will heal their land."



A lot of our kids have already started.

EE's devotional

newAutumn Leaves

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