By the rude Sergeant's bellow, "_Rise and shine!_"

Gilding the foam of distant seas--
And humbly then I bowed my neck
And sank forlornly to my knees
To swab the blooming deck;
A wealth of flaming pageantries,
When, in a dusty Indian fort,
I went to early morning jerks,[A]
Cursing the sun and all his works
And dripping perspiration by the quart;

In Egypt, too, a pallid glow
Through swirls of desolating dust--
There often have I watched it grow,
Fed up enough to bust;
In Palestine, uncertain, slow
(While standing-to, with drowsy eyes),
Herald of shells and, what was worse,
Waking the ancient Eastern curse,
A hundred thousand million ravenous flies.

Sombre, inspiring, radiant, chill,
Mysterious, wild, inert, ablaze,
A thousand times on plain and hill
The dawn has held my gaze;
Idly I dream of it, until
A sterner mood invades my brain
And I grow resolute. Here and now
I register a mighty vow
_Never_ to see the beastly thing again.

ONE OF THE _PUNCH_ BRIGADE.

[Footnote A: Physical training.]

* * * * *

"The Home Secretary gives notice that summer time will be
brought into force this year on the morning of Sunday, March
30, and will continue until the night of Sunday-Monday;
September 28129."--_Scots Paper_.

By which time, it is confidently expected, the Peace Conference will
be over.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Road Sweeper_. "WOT'S BECOME O' BILL? I 'AVEN'T SEEN
'IM FOR MONTHS."

_Female ditto_. "BILL! WHY, 'AVEN'T YOU HEARD? 'E'S PROMOTED. 'E'S ON
THE BINS."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

_(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)_

MR. H.M. HYNDMAN brings to _Clemenceau: the Man and his Time_ (GRANT
RICHARDS) a specialised knowledge of the intricacies of French
politics, personal friendship with his subject and a sympathy not
discounted by profound differences of opinion. Here is one veteran
fighting man writing a brilliant (I don't use the word as a _cliche_)
chronicle and commentary of the battles of another, battles which
cover the same period and were fought broadly for the same causes. But
the French Radical extremist could never see his way to subscribe
to the Socialist creed. His stalwart individualism, in part
temperamental, was also as a political working faith the result of a
distrus