We've christened her The Cecil.  There's a brass-plate and a dome,
   And a knocker and a doormat all complete.
If yer callin', second Tuesdays is our reg'lar day at home -
   So delighted fer to have a teet-er-teet!


There is mud along the corridors enough to bog a cow;
   In the air there hangs a musty kind of whoof;
There's a frog-pond in the parlor, and the kitchen is slough.
   She has neither doors nor winders, nor a roof.


When they post our bald somnambulist as missin' from his flat
   We take soundin's for the blighter with a prop.
By the day the board is gratis; by the week it's half iv that:
   For the season there's a correspondin' drop.


Openin' off the sapcious 'allway is me natty littlesuit,
   A commodious and accessible abode.
By joodicious disposition and excludin' of me feet,
   There is sleepin' room for Oliver, the toad.


Though the ventilation's gusty, and in gobs the ceilin' falls,
   And with oral respiration disagrees,
Though there comes a certain quantity of seepage from the walls.
   There are scores I knows in diggin's worse than these.


On me right is Cobber Hoban.  There's a spring above his head,
   And his mattress is a special kind of clay.
He's a most pertickler bloke about the fashion of his bed,
   And he makes it with a shovel every day.


Man is dust.  If so, the Cobber has bin paddle dup a treat:
   But on sanitation, strike me, he's a torf,
For he lights a fire on Sundays, bakes his surface in the heat -
   Then he takes a bleedin' maul, and cracks it orf!


We bin hangin' out so long in this gorforsaken 'ole
   We've forgot there's sheets, 'n' baths, 'n' tidy skins.
In the dark 'n' deadly carm last night they took us on patrol -
   Seven little fellers, thinknin' of their sins.


It was ours like blinded snails to prowl the soggy, slimy night,
   With a feeler prickin' out of every pore.
For the death that goes in darkness or that jabs yeh with a light,
   And the other little fortunes what is war.


That's the stuff to get your liver, that's the acid on a man,
   'N' it tries him bone 'n' marrer, through 'n' through.
You have got the thought to comfort you that life is but a span,
   If the gun of dear old Fritz discovers you.


We got back again at daybreak.  Cobber ducked to doss, and said,
   From the soft, embracin' mud: "No more I'll roam.
Oh, thank Heaven, blokes," he murmurs, "for the comfort of a bed!
   Gorstruth, but ain't it good to have a home."

"D"
The Bulletin, 11 October 1917, p14