text: If it were not for England, who would bear
  This heavy servitude one moment more?
  To keep a brothel, sweep and wash the floor
  Of filthiest hovels were noble to compare
  With this brass-cleaning life. Now here, now there
  Harried in foolishness, scanned curiously o'er
  By fools made brazen by conceit, and store
  Of antique witticisms thin and bare.
  
  Only the love of comrades sweetens all,
  Whose laughing spirit will not be outdone.
  As night-watching men wait for the sun
  To hearten them, so wait I on such boys
  As neither brass nor Hell-fire may appal,
  Nor guns, nor sergeant-major's bluster and noise.