You young friskies who today <br />Jump and fight in Father’s hay <br />With bows and arrows and wooden spears, <br />Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers, <br />Happy though these hours you spend, <br />Have they warned you how games end? <br />Boys, from the first time you prod <br />And thrust with spears of curtain-rod, <br />From the first time you tear and slash <br />Your long-bows from the garden ash, <br />Or fit your shaft with a blue jay feather, <br />Binding the split tops together, <br />From that same hour by fate you’re bound <br />As champions of this stony ground, <br />Loyal and true in everything, <br />To serve your Army and your King, <br />Prepared to starve and sweat and die <br />Under some fierce foreign sky, <br />If only to keep safe those joys <br />That belong to British boys, <br />To keep young Prussians from the soft <br />Scented hay of father’s loft, <br />And stop young Slavs from cutting bows <br />And bendy spears from Welsh hedgerows. <br />Another War soon gets begun, <br />A dirtier, a more glorious one; <br />Then, boys, you’ll have to play, all in; <br />It’s the cruellest team will win. <br />So hold your nose against the stink <br />And never stop too long to think. <br />Wars don’t change except in name; <br />The next one must go just the same, <br />And new foul tricks unguessed before <br />Will win and justify this War. <br />Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage <br />Once more with pomp and greed and rage; <br />Courtly ministers will stop <br />At home and fight to the last drop; <br />By the million men will die <br />In some new horrible agony; <br />And children here will thrust and poke, <br />Shoot and die, and laugh at the joke, <br />With bows and arrows and wooden spears, <br />Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers.<br /><br />Robert Graves<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-next-war/
