An Old Twenty-third Man
Robert Graves
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,
Not that! The Three-and-Twentieth Legions dead,
Dead in the first year of this damned campaign
The Legions dead, dead, and wont rise again.
Pity? Rome pities her brave lads that die,
But we need pity also, you and I,
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!
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; its all right.
If these new men are slovenly, in your thinking,
God damn it! youll 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 autumns fall
Shall bang old Vercingetorix out of Gaul.
