The Zone, with its glum and its glad men
Whose brains with one thought were a throb
The Zone with its glorious madmen
Who ate, drank, and slept with "the job"
Whose talk was of "slides" and of "levels"
Of "seepage," and "channels" and "fills"
A crew of maniacal devils -
Oh Lord, how the memory thirlls!

The wind's blowing cold and we shiver,
And somehow we seem to recall
The days of the old Chagres River,
The nights in the new Corozal,
The tropical moon in its beauty,
And the trade blowing gentle and bland,
And the stars doing sentinel duty
As they watched over Spiggoty Land.

How they winked down on Panama City
And blinked on its ways from above,
Its priests and its smiling banditti
Its lights and its laughter and love.
They saw how we spent and we sported,
They knew how we loafed and we lived
They knew who the girls were we courted -
And most of the Zone did, beside.

We worked and we put our whole heart in,
And swift was the pace we were hurled,
For we knew we were all taking part in
The mightiest job in the world;
Now back in the "States" you will find us,
Where life is of different tone,
And the other is well left behind us,
But say, What's the news from the Zone?