This poem contains historic language and imagery which is offensive or outdated. The original content has been retained in the interests of research and historical data.
Bibles that stop bullets are a phenomenon that is often celebrated, as the image from the Imperial War Museum above shows. I am confident there is also something similar on display in the Australian War Memorial.
The poet Samuel K. Cowan, will again in this series on 'poems for recitation'. I will endeavour to provide a biography at another date. Perhaps I will, in the process, determine if the poem is auto-biographical, biographical or fiction. There is a Samuel K. Cowan who served in the army.
The poem appears in at least 12 newspapers in 1885, and there are many notations in Trove of the poem being read at specific events in the years that followed.
In the Old Canteen
POEM FOR RECITATION
One more toast at parting, messmats — one more-toast, before I go:
Let us drink "The Grand Old Regiment," as we used to, years ago,
When we lay in trench, at Lucknow, and in camp at Singapore:
It is fifteen years come Christmas since I left the fine old corps!
There be now but four among you who were messmates with me then :
Bugler Brown and Tom the sailor, Sergeant Smith and Corporal Ben :
Gone or dead — the dear old regiment! — still I love it all the same.
As a follow loves a headstone — hallowed with his mother's name.
It was only yester-even, as I sowed and ploughed the plain,
That the young squire told me, " Farmer, your old regiment's back again :
They be stationed down at Chatham;" and I left the seeds and plough
I was home at nine this morning, here I am at Chatham now.
For I say Sally : "Sally, it is fourteen years and more
Since my raiment sailed for india: they are back, the dear old corps!
My old captain's now the colonel: I must go and see him, lass:
I must go and meet my messmates: we must clink a kindly glass:"
But my Sally sighed, and answered:"Yon had better mind your plough!
I have told you, dear, so often, there's no need to tell you now,
That, betwixt old friends and glasses, many's the sorrows we have seen :
When you meet your messmates, Charlie, keep away from the old canteen!"
No I haven't done it; messmates; but I answered softly : " Sal,
I have always done my duty : Go's my duty—and I shall!
I'll be back betimes, my lassie, firm of foot and hale of head
Back in time to read my Bible, and to put my boy to bead!"
Ha! you laugh! to read my bible? Well, my hearties, where's the joke?
Night and morn I always reads it, and I love the dear old book:
I have found no friend in England kinder to me, since my birth ;
And I owe more to my Bible than to any friend on earth.
No, I ain't a saintly fellow; I have lived a soldier's life ;
Loved my pipe and loved my bottle; been in many a rowdy strife;
Had my flings and had my follies; and I tell you, frank and free,
There be straighter roads to heaven than by marchin' after me!
Yet I alway reads my Bible; if you wish, I'll tell you why :
First; fill up your glasses, messmates; I would have you drain them dry.
Here's the health of "The Old Regiment !" coupled with "Our glorious Queen!"
Now, if you would hear my story, ' Attention!" in the old canteen.
My poor mother — rest her sprit! — some few years afore she died —
Just when I had listed, comrades — called me kindly to her side :
"You are going to leave me, laddie: I have little, son, to give,
Save my blessing and my Bible — may it teach you how to live:
It was once your soldier-father's; it was aye your father's pride;
Dear he loved it in his lifetime, dear he loved it when he died.
Take it, with your mother's blessing: prize it for your father's sake;
If my poor lad scorn its precepts, his old mother's heart will break!"
Then the roase, and placed it — bless her — in the breast o' the coat I wore
In the breast o' my scarlet tunic; and I sailed for Singapore.
We were stationed there a 'twelvemonth : many a gallant march we made;
Last; to Lucknow, where the sun, lads, showed a hundred in the shade.
There the children lay a-starving, and the mothers watched them die,
For they couldn't move from weakness, and above them blazed the sky:
And the Black Boys howled upon us, though the smoke of shot and shell,
Like a swarm of swarthy devils — black deserters out of hell!
I was standing outpost sentry; striken by the sickening sun,
Flat I fainted, and a comrade thought me dead, and seized my gun:
But the bombshells bursting round me, shook me from my swoon, awake,
And I rose, and lo! a Sepoy sneaking round me, like a snake!
Sneaking snakelike; then outleapt he, with a yell — a wild halloo —
With his hatchet raised to hack me, with his hatchet raised to hew:
And a second skulking devil slunk behind a heap of slain,
With his rifle raised to shoot me — and I stood betwixt the twain!
Bang! the bullet whizzed — I hear it — pingeing, whistling to my grave!
Struck me on the breast — the Bible — the old Book my mother gave:
And the bullet bounded of it, and before his blow was given,
Split the hatchet — yelled the Sepoy! It's as true as God's in heaven.
You may laugh, and chaff me, comrades : "Any book had served as well;
Any book had stopped your bullet." That may be — I cannot tell.
All I tell you is, my messmates, as I often tell the wife,
"I have no friend like my Bible — for that old friend saved my life"
That's my story — true as gospel : and I often think, thinks I,
"If on earth it never failed me, will it fail a chap on high ? "
Surely not : leastways, I'll trust-it, for my trusty friend it's been.
Good-night, sergeant! good-night, corporal! good night, all, in the old canteen!
Samuel K. Cowan, M. A. in the Theatre
Source
In the Old Canteen. (1885, February 20). The North Eastern Ensign (Benalla, Vic. : 1872 - 1938), p. 2 (SUPPLEMENT TO The North Eastern Ensign.). Retrieved March 25, 2023, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article70806059
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