In France.

Oh, the pleasant life a soldier leads!
Let the lawyer count his fees,
Let old women tell their beads,
Let each booby squire breed cattle, if he please,
Far better 'tis, I think,
To make love, fight, and drink.
Odds boddekin!
Such life makes a man to a god akin.

Do we enter any town?
The portcullis is let down,
And the joy-bells are rung by municipal authority;
The gates are open'd wide,
And the city-keys presented us beside,
Merely to recognize our vast superiority.
The married citizens, 'tis ten to one,
Would wish us fairly gone;
But we stay while it suits our good pleasure.
Then each eve, at the rising of the moon,
The fiddler strikes up a merry tune,
We meet a buxom partner fullsoon,
And we foot it to a military measure.

When our garrison at last gets " th'rout, "
Who can adequately tell
The regret of the fair all the city throughout,
And the tone with which they bid us " farewell ? "
Their tears would make a flood — a perfect river:
And, to soothe her despair,
Each disconsolate maid entreats of us to give her,
Ere we go, a single lock of our hair.
Alas! it is not often
That my heart can soften
Responsive to the feelings of the fair!

On a march, whom our gallant divisons
In the country make a halt,
Think not that we limit our provisions
To Paddy's fare, " potatoes and salt. "
Could such beggarly cheer
Ever answer a French grenadier?
No! we send a dragoon guard
To each neighbouring farm-yard,
To collect the choicest pickings —
Turkeys, sucking-pigs, and chickens.
For why should mere rustic rapscallions
Fatten on such tit-bits,
Better suited to the spits
Of our hungry and valorous battalions?

But, oh! at our return
To our dear native France,
Each village in its turn,
With music, and wine, and merry dance,
Forth on our joyful passage comes;
And the pulse of each beart beats time to the drums.
Oh, the merry life a soldier leads!