"Why the deuce do you come rapping, rapping at my Office-door?
Yet not 'enter' when you're told to?"--here I opened wide the door--
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Open next I flung the shutter, when, with a prodigious flutter,
In there stepped a bumptious Raven, black as any blackamoor.
Not the least obeisance made he, not a moment stopped or stayed he,
But with scornful look, though shady, perched above my Office-door,
Perched upon BRITANNIA's bust that stood above my Office-door--
Perched, and sat, and seemed to snore.

"Well," I said, sardonic smiling, "this is really rather riling;
"It comports not with decorum such as the War Office bore
In old days stiff and clean-shaven. Dub me a Gladstonian craven
If I ever saw a Raven at the W.O. before.
Tell me what your blessed name is. '_Rule Britannia_' held of yore,"
Quoth the bird, "'Tis so no more!"

Much I marvelled this sophistic fowl to utter pessimistic
Fustian, which so little meaning--little relevancy bore
To the rule of me and SOLLY; but, although it may sound folly,
This strange fowl a strange resemblance to "Our Only General" wore,
To the W-LS-L-Y whose pretensions to sound military lore
Are becoming quite a bore.

But the Raven, sitting lonely on that much-peeled bust, spake only
Of our Army as a makeshift, small, ill-manned, and precious poor.
Drat the pessimistic bird!--he grumbled of "the hurdy-gurdy
Marching-past side of a soldier's life in peace." "We've fought
before,