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Robert W Service - The RevelationRobert W Service - The Revelation
Work rating: Medium


The same old sprint in the morning, boys, to the same old din and smut; Chained all day to the same old desk, down in the same old rut; Posting the same old greasy books, catching the same old train: Oh, how will I manage to stick it all, if I ever get back again? We`ve bidden good-bye to life in a cage, we`re finished with pushing a pen; They`re pumping us full of bellicose rage, they`re showing us how to be men. We`re only beginning to find ourselves; we`re wonders of brawn and thew; But when we go back to our Sissy jobs, oh, what are we going to do? For shoulders curved with the counter stoop will be carried erect and square; And faces white from the office light will be bronzed by the open air; And we`ll walk with the stride of a new-born pride, with a new-found joy in our eyes, Scornful men who have diced with death under the naked skies. And when we get back to the dreary grind, and the bald-headed boss`s call, Don`t you think that the dingy window-blind, and the dingier office wall, Will suddenly melt to a vision of space, of violent, flame-scarred night? Then . . . oh, the joy of the danger-thrill, and oh, the roar of the fight! Don`t you think as we peddle a card of pins the counter will fade away, And again we`ll be seeing the sand-bag rims, and the barb-wire`s misty grey? As a flat voice asks for a pound of tea, don`t you fancy we`ll hear instead The night-wind moan and the soothing drone of the packet that`s overhead? Don`t you guess that the things we`re seeing now will haunt us through all the years; Heaven and hell rolled into one, glory and blood and tears; Life`s pattern picked with a scarlet thread, where once we wove with a grey To remind us all how we played our part in the shock of an epic day? Oh, we`re booked for the Great Adventure now, we`re pledged to the Real Romance; We`ll find ourselves or we`ll lose ourselves somewhere in giddy old France; We`ll know the zest of the fighter`s life; the best that we have we`ll give; We`ll hunger and thirst; we`ll die . . . but first we`ll live; by the gods, we`ll live! We`ll breathe free air and we`ll bivouac under the starry sky; We`ll march with men and we`ll fight with men, and we`ll see men laugh and die; We`ll know such joy as we never dreamed; we`ll fathom the deeps of pain: But the hardest bit of it all will be when we come back home again. For some of us smirk in a chiffon shop, and some of us teach in a school; Some of us help with the seat of our pants to polish an office stool; The merits of somebody`s soap or jam some of us seek to explain, But all of us wonder what we`ll do when we have to go back again.
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