孩子们，早晨还是老样子，奔向同样的嘈杂和淫乱;整天被锁在同一张旧桌子前，在同样的陈规下;寄着同样油腻腻的旧书，赶着同样的旧火车:哦，如果我能再回来，我怎么能坚持下去呢?我们已经告别了笼子里的生活，我们不再推笔了;他们让我们充满了好战的愤怒，他们教我们如何成为男人。我们才刚刚开始发现自我;我们是肌肉和肌肉的奇迹;但当我们回到娘娘腔的工作时——哦，我们该怎么办呢?因为弯曲的肩膀会被抬得笔直而端正;办公室灯光下苍白的脸会被户外的空气晒成古铜色; And we'll walk with the stride of a new-born pride, with a new-found joy in our eyes, Scornful men who have diced with death under the naked skies. And when we get back to the dreary grind, and the bald-headed boss's call, Don't you think that the dingy window-blind, and the dingier office wall, Will suddenly melt to a vision of space, of violent, flame-scarred night? Then . . . oh, the joy of the danger-thrill, and oh, the roar of the fight! Don't you think as we peddle a card of pins the counter will fade away, And again we'll be seeing the sand-bag rims, and the barb-wire's misty grey? As a flat voice asks for a pound of tea, don't you fancy we'll hear instead The night-wind moan and the soothing drone of the packet that's overhead? Don't you guess that the things we're seeing now will haunt us through all the years; Heaven and hell rolled into one, glory and blood and tears; Life's pattern picked with a scarlet thread, where once we wove with a grey To remind us all how we played our part in the shock of an epic day? Oh, we're booked for the Great Adventure now, we're pledged to the Real Romance; We'll find ourselves or we'll lose ourselves somewhere in giddy old France; We'll know the zest of the fighter's life; the best that we have we'll give; We'll hunger and thirst; we'll die . . . but first -- we'll live; by the gods, we'll live! We'll breathe free air and we'll bivouac under the starry sky; We'll march with men and we'll fight with men, and we'll see men laugh and die; We'll know such joy as we never dreamed; we'll fathom the deeps of pain: But the hardest bit of it all will be -- when we come back home again. For some of us smirk in a chiffon shop, and some of us teach in a school; Some of us help with the seat of our pants to polish an office stool; The merits of somebody's soap or jam some of us seek to explain, But all of us wonder what we'll do when we have to go back again.