Listen, soldier, to the tale of the tender nightingale,
'Tis a charm that soon will ease your wounds so cruel,
Singing medicine for your pain, in a sympathetic strain,
With a jug, jug, jug of lemonade or gruel.

Singing bandages and lint; salve and cerate without stint,
Singing plenty both of liniment and lotion,
And your mixtures pushed about, and the pills for you served out,
With alacrity and promptitude of motion.

Singing light and gentle hands, and a nurse who understands
How to manage every sort of application,
From a poultice to a leech; whom you haven't got to teach
The way to make a poppy fomentation.

Singing pillow for you, smoothed; smart and ache and anguish smoothed,
By the readiness of feminine invention;
Singing fever's thirst allayed, and the bed you've tumbled made,
With a cheerful and considerate attention.

Singing succour to the brave, and a rescue from the grave,
Hear the nightingale that's come to the Crimea,
'Tis a nightingale as strong in her heart as in her song,
To carry out so gallant an idea.