Mercenary's Song (A.D. 1600)

I am no callow Christian,
No pus-paunched prelate, I,
I hope not for salvation,
Nor fear the day, I'll die

In wantonness of appetite,
In women, wine and war,
In fire and blood and rapine
In these my pleasures are.

I love the smell of horse dung,
The sight of corpse-strewn mud,
The sound of steel on armour
The feel of clotting blood.

The women I have ravished,
The infants I have slain,
The priests and nuns l've roasted,
They haunt me not again.

Priests talk of soul's salvation,
And shining lights afar,
But give me a harlot's laughter
And the battle flash of war.

Priests talk of soul's damnation
The white hot pits of hell;
I fear more wounds that fester
And gape and rot and smell

Then here's to blood and blasphemy!
And here's to whores and drink!
In life you know you're living
In death we only stink.

George Smith Patton, Jr. (1885-1945)

[João Silva]