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from dark defile to gethsemane 

And some was sliced and some was halved,

Andsome was crimped and some was carved,

And some was gutted and some was starved,

When the Widow give the party.

What, then, of the sound of the bugle, the poem’s last ‘word’ which is not a word?
Is it triumphant, melancholy, ironic? It is all these; language can do for music what
music cannot do for itself. The bugle’s note also blends the two ‘voices’ in the poem,
that of its sophisticated maker and its other-knowing speaker. The first knows
about old ballads, and King John, and could tell you what the Colonel thought; the
second knows about ‘raw blood’.
Many of the poems ofBarrack-Room Balladshave to manage such conflicting
voices. One solution is formal, visible on the page, as in ‘The Widow at Windsor’
where a parenthesis punctuates, and punctures, each boastful or militant quatrain:

There’s ’er nick on the cavalry ’orses,

There’s ’er mark on the medical stores—

An’ ’er troopers you’ll find with a fair wind be’ind

Thattakesustovariouswars.

(Poor beggars!—barbarious wars!)

·······

We ’ave ’eard o’ the Widow at Windsor,

It’s safest to leave ’er alone:

For ’er sentries we stand by the sea an’ the land

Wherever the bugles are blown.

(Poor beggars!—an’ don’t we get blown!)^13

In other poems this formal poise is absent, and the reader is left to make sense
of clashing perspectives. ‘ ‘‘Snarleyow’’ ’ tells the story of a horse-drawn artillery
battery moving into position during one of those ‘barbarious wars’: first the horse
of the title, and then one of the artillerymen, the ‘Driver’s Brother’, is mortally
wounded. When ‘Snarleyow’ gets tangled in the limber of the gun, the Driver’s
Brother pleads for the team to be halted: ‘ ‘‘Pull up, pull up forSnarleyow—’is
’ead’s between ’is ’eels!’’ ’ But the Driver refuses:

The Driver ’umped ’is shoulder, for the wheels was goin’ round,

An’ there ain’t no ‘Stop, conductor!’ when a batt’ry’s changin’ ground;

Sez ’e: ‘I broke the beggar in, an’ very sad I feels,

‘But I couldn’t pull up, not foryou—your ’ead between your ’eels!’

’E ’adn’t ’ardly spoke the word, before a droppin’ shell

A little right the batt’ry an’ between the sections fell;

An’ when the smoke ’ad cleared away, before the limber-wheels,

There lay the Driver’s Brother with ’is ’ead between ’is ’eels.

(^13) Kipling, ‘The Widow at Windsor’, inRudyard Kipling’s Verse, 413–14.