The Kid has gone to the Colors
And we don't know what to say;
The Kid we have loved and cuddled
Stepped out for the Flag to-day.
We thought him a child, a baby
With never a care at all,
But his country called him man-size
And the Kid has heard the call.
 
He paused to watch the recruiting,
Where, fired by the fife and drum,
He bowed his head to Old Glory
And thought that it whispered: "Come!"
The Kid, not being a slacker,
Stood forth with patriot-joy
To add his name to the roster—
And God, we're proud of the boy!
 
The Kid has gone to the Colors;
It seems but a little while
Since he drilled a schoolboy army
In a truly martial style,
But now he's a man, a soldier,
And we lend him a listening ear,
For his heart is a heart all loyal,
Unscourged by the curse of fear.
 
His dad, when he told him, shuddered,
His mother—God bless her!—cried;
Yet, blest with a mother-nature,
She wept with a mother-pride,
But he whose old shoulders straightened
Was Granddad—for memory ran
To years when he, too, a youngster,
Was changed by the Flag to a man!

Give place, ye lovers, here before
That spent your boasts and brags in vain;
My lady's beauty passeth more
The best of yours, I dare well sayen,
Than doth the sun the candle light,
Or brightest day the darkest night.

And thereto hath a troth as just
As had Penelope the fair;
For what she saith, ye may it trust,
As it by writing sealëd were:
And virtues hath she many mo
Than I with pen have skill to show.

I could rehearse, if that I would,
The whole effect of Nature's plaint
When she had lost the perfect mould,
The like to whom she would not paint:
With wringing hands how she did cry,
And what she said, I know it, I.

I know she swore with raging mind,
Her kingdom only set apart;
There was no loss by law of kind
That could have gone so near her heart.
And this was chiefly all her pain:
She could not make the like again.

Sith Nature thus gave her the praise
To be the chiefest work she wrought,
In faith, methink some better ways
On your behalf might well be sought
Than to compare, as ye have done,
To match the candle with the sun.