Bang The Drum!

It's Sepia Saturday again, and after letting you see my paternal grandparents last week, with their young family, I thought I would gradually post photos of the children in later years - much later, for the most part. This picture intrigued me when I came across it, for the boy looks so young! He had to be one of my uncles and I hazard a guess at George, but here he is anyway, in all his finery.

If I get bitten by the muse later on today, I might come back and add a suitable poem, after using the drum picture as a prompt, but I make no promises...

Having finished lunch, I suddenly thought  to look for a drum poem, ready made, on the Internet. How could I not have done so before?
There follows one from The Cambridge Intelligencer of August 3, 1793.
It was written by a Quaker, one Mr John Scott, and entitled, appropriately enough ...

The Drum

I hate that drum's discordant sound,
Parading round, and round, and round:
To thoughtless youth it pleasure yields,
And lures from cities and from fields,
To sell their liberty for charms
Of tawdry lace and glitt'ring arms;
And when Ambition's voice commands,
To fight and fall in foreign lands.

I hate that drum's discordant sound,
Parading round, and round, and round:
To me it talks of ravaged plains,
And burning towns and ruin'd swains,
And mangled limbs, and dying groans,
And widow's tears, and orphans moans,
And all that Misery's hand bestows,
To fill a catalogue of woes.

It is hard to imagine in these days of sophisticated weapons of war and modern communication systems, that young drummer boys were used in the armies, or indeed navies, of long ago, to drum signals to the men. There's an article on the subject HERE that you might like to read if you're interested.