Originally published in Douglas Jerrold's Shilling Magazine (Punch) vol.1 #2 (Feb 1845).
Yonder is a little drum
Hanging on the wall,
Dusty wreaths and tatter'd flags
Round about it fall.
A Shepherd youth on Cheviot's hills
Watch'd the sheep whose skin
A cunning workman wrought and gave
The little drum its din.
O pleasant are fair Cheviot's hills
With velvet verdure spread,
And pleasant 'tis amid its heath
To make your summer bed.
And sweet and clear are Cheviot's rills
That trickle to its vales,
And balmily its tiny flowers
Breathe on the passing gales.
And thus hath felt the Shepherd boy
Whilst tending of his fold,
Nor thought there was in all the world
A spot like Cheviot's wold.
And so it was for many a day,
But change with Time will come,
And he—(Alas! for him the day!)
He heard the little drum.
"Follow," said the drummer-boy,
"Would you live in story;
"For he who strikes a foeman down,
"Wins a wreath of glory!"
"Rub-a-dub and rub-a-dub,"
The drummer beats away—
The Shepherd let his bleating flock
On Cheviot wildly stray.
On Egypt's arid waste of sand
The Shepherd now is lying,
Around him many a parching tongue
For water's faintly crying.
O that he were on Cheviot's hills
With velvet verdure spread,
Or lying 'mid the blooming heath,
Where oft he'd made his bed.
Or could he drink of those sweet rills
That trickle to the vales,
Or breathe once more the balminess
Of Cheviot's mountain gales.
At length upon his wearied eyes
The mists of slumber come,
And he is in his home again—
Till waken'd by the dram.
"Take arms! Take arms," his leader cries,
"The hated foeman's nigh;"
Guns loudly roar—steel clanks on steel,
And thousands fall to die.
The Shepherd's blood makes red the sand,
"Oh! water—give me some!
"My voice might reach a friendly ear,
"But for that little drum!"
'Mid moaning men—'mid dying men,
The drummer kept his way,
And many a one, by "glory" lured,
Did curse the drum that day.
"Rub-a-dub and rub-e-dub,"
The drummer beat aloud—
The Shepherd died, and ere the morn,
The hot sand was bis shroud.
And this is glory? Yes; and still
Will man the tempter follow,
Nor learn that glory, like its drum,
Is but a sound and hollow.