This is the song for a soldier <br />To sing as he rides from home <br />To the fields afar where the battles are <br />Or over the ocean's foam: <br />'Whatever the dangers waiting <br />In the lands I have not seen, <br />If I do not fall-if I come back at all, <br />Then I will come back clean. <br /> <br /> <br />'I may lie in the mud of the trenches, <br />I may reek with blood and mire, <br />But I will control, by the God in my soul, <br />The might of my man's desire. <br />I will fight my foe in the open, <br />But my sword shall be sharp and keen <br />For the foe within who would lure me to sin, <br />And I will come back clean. <br /> <br /> <br />'I may not leave for my children <br />Brave medals that I have worn, <br />But the blood in my veins shall leave no stains <br />On bride or on babes unborn; <br />And the scars that my body may carry <br />Shall not be from deeds obscene, <br />For my will shall say to the beast, <br />Obey <br />! <br />And I will come back clean. <br /> <br /> <br />'Oh, not on the fields of slaughter <br />And not in the prison-cell, <br />Or in hunger and cold is the story told <br />By war, of its darkest hell. <br />But the old, old sin of the senses <br />Can tell what that word may mean <br />To the soldiers' wives and to innocent lives, <br />And I will come back clean.'<br /><br />Ella Wheeler Wilcox<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/come-back-clean/
