The Army Mules Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDDEEFFGGEEHHII EE JJKKLLGGLL DDMMDDNOEE| Oh the airman's game is a showman's game for we all of us watch him go | A |
| With his roaring soaring aeroplane and his bombs for the blokes below | A |
| Over the railways and over the dumps over the Hun and the Turk | B |
| You'll hear him mutter What ho she bumps when the Archies get to work | B |
| But not of him is the song I sing though he follow the eagle's flight | C |
| And with shrapnel holes in his splintered wing comes home to his roost at night | C |
| He may silver his wings on the shining stars he may look from the throne on high | D |
| He may follow the flight of the wheeling kite in the blue Egyptian sky | D |
| But he's only a hero built to plan turned out by the Army schools | E |
| And I sing of the rankless thankless man who hustles the Army mules | E |
| Now where he comes from and where he lives is a mystery dark and dim | F |
| And it's rarely indeed that the General gives a D S O to him | F |
| The stolid infantry digs its way like a mole in a ruined wall | G |
| The cavalry lends a tone they say to what were else but a brawl | G |
| The Brigadier of the Mounted Fut like a cavalry Colonel swanks | E |
| When he goeth abroad like a gilded nut to receive the General's thanks | E |
| The Ordnance man is a son of a gun and his lists are a standing joke | H |
| You order Choke arti Jerusalem one for Jerusalem artichoke | H |
| The Medicals shine with a number nine and the men of the great R E | I |
| Their Colonels are Methodist married or mad and some of them all the three | I |
| In all these units the road to fame is taught by the Army schools | E |
| But a man has got to be born to the game when he tackles the Army mules | E |
| - | |
| For if you go where the depots are as the dawn is breaking grey | J |
| By the waning light of the morning star as the dust cloud clears away | J |
| You'll see a vision among the dust like a man and a mule combined | K |
| It's the kind of thing you must take on trust for its outlines aren't defined | K |
| A thing that whirls like a spinning top and props like a three legged stool | L |
| And you find its a long legged Queensland boy convincing an Army mule | L |
| And the rider sticks to the hybrid's hide like paper sticks to a wall | G |
| For a magnoon Waler is next to ride with every chance of a fall | G |
| It's a rough house game and a thankless game and it isn't a game for a fool | L |
| For an army's fate and a nation's fame may turn on an Army mule | L |
| - | |
| And if you go to the front line camp where the sleepless outposts lie | D |
| At the dead of night you can hear the tramp of the mule train toiling by | D |
| The rattle and clink of a leading chain the creak of the lurching load | M |
| As the patient plodding creatures strain at their task in the shell torn road | M |
| Through the dark and the dust you may watch them go till the dawn is grey in the sky | D |
| And only the watchful pickets know when the All night Corps goes by | D |
| And far away as the silence falls when the last of the train has gone | N |
| A weary voice through the darkness Get on there men get on | O |
| It isn't a hero built to plan turned out by the modern schools | E |
| It's only the Army Service man a driving his Army mules | E |
Banjo Paterson
(1)
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