| Robert Graves (1895–1985). Fairies and Fusiliers. 1918. |
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| 2. An Old Twenty-Third Man |
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| “IS that the Three-and-Twentieth, Strabo mine, | |
| Marching below, and we still gulping wine?” | |
| From the sad magic of his fragrant cup | |
| The red-faced old centurion started up, | |
| Cursed, battered on the table. “No,” he said, | 5 |
| “Not that! The Three-and-Twentieth Legion’s dead, | |
| Dead in the first year of this damned campaign— | |
| The Legion’s dead, dead, and won’t rise again. | |
| Pity? Rome pities her brave lads that die, | |
| But we need pity also, you and I, | 10 |
| Whom Gallic spear and Belgian arrow miss, | |
| Who live to see the Legion come to this, | |
| Unsoldierlike, slovenly, bent on loot, | |
| Grumblers, diseased, unskilled to thrust or shoot. | |
| O, brown cheek, muscled shoulder, sturdy thigh! | 15 |
| Where are they now? God! watch it struggle by, | |
| The sullen pack of ragged ugly swine. | |
| Is that the Legion, Gracchus? Quick, the wine!” | |
| “Strabo,” said Gracchus, “you are strange tonight. | |
| The Legion is the Legion; it’s all right. | 20 |
| If these new men are slovenly, in your thinking, | |
| God damn it! you’ll not better them by drinking. | |
| They all try, Strabo; trust their hearts and hands. | |
| The Legion is the Legion while Rome stands, | |
| And these same men before the autumn’s fall | 25 |
| Shall bang old Vercingetorix out of Gaul.” | |
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