The Guards Came Through, and Other Poems by Arthur Conan Doyle
Christmas in Wartime
1916
Cheer oh, comrades, we can bide the blast And face the gloom until it shall grow lighter. What though one Christmas should be overcast, If duty done makes all the others brighter.
1917 THE LAST LAP
We seldom were quick off the mark, And sprinting was never our game; But when it's insistence and hold-for-the-distance, We've never been beat at that same.
The first lap was all to the Hun, At the second we still saw his back; But we knew how to wait and to spurt down the straight, Till we left him dead-beat on the track.
He's a bluffer for all he is worth, But he's winded and done to the core, So the last lap is here, with the tape very near, And the old colours well to the fore.
1918
Not merry! No—the words would grate, With gaps at every table-side, But chastened, thankful, calm, sedate, Be your victorious Christmas-tide.