CCIX
THE LUCKNOW GARRISON
Still stand thy ruins ’neath the Indian sky,
Memorials eloquent of blood and tears!
O! for the spirit of those days gone by
To wake a strain amid these later years
Worthy of thee and thine! I seem to see,
When thinking on thy consecrated dead,
From thy scarred chambers start
The heroes whom thy fiery travail bred
And made thee—for us English—what thou art!
Green grows the grass around thy crumbling walls
Where glorious Lawrence groaned his life away!
And childhood’s footsteps echo through those halls
Wherein thy wounded and thy dying lay!
While blent with infant laughter seems to rise
The far-off murmur of thy battle roll,
The prayer—the shout—the groan—
Outram’s unselfish chivalry of soul,
And white-haired Havelock’s strong, commanding tone!
Yet, what are names? The genius of the spot,
Born of our womanhood and manhood brave,
Shall fire our children’s children! Ne’er forgot
Shall be the dust of thy historic grave
While Reverence fills the sense with musing calm,
While Glory stirs the pulse of prince or clown,
While blooms on British sod
The glorious flower of our fair renown,
Our English valour and our trust in God!
The memory of the Living! Lo, they stand
Engirt with honour while the day draws in,
An ever lessening and fraternal band
Linked in chivalric glory and akin
To earth’s immortals! Time may bow the frame
And plough deep wrinkles ’mid their honoured scars,
But Death-like Night which brings
To earth the blaze majestic of the stars,
Shall but enhance their glory with his wings!
The memory of the Dead! A pilgrim, I
Have bowed my face before thy honoured shrine,
With pride deep-welling while the moments by
Sped to a human ecstasy divine
Tingling my very blood, to think that they,
Martyrs and victors in our English need,
Were children of the earth—
Yet better—heroes of our island breed
And men and women of our British birth!
John Renton Denning. CCX
SOLDIERS OF IND
Men of the Hills and men of the Plains, men of the Isles and Sea,
Brothers in bond of battle and blood wherever the battle may be;
A song and a thought for your fighting line, a song for the march and camp,
A song to the beat of the rolling drums, a song to the measured tramp,
When the feet lift up on the dusty road ’neath sun and moon and star,
And the prayer is prayed by mother and maid for their best beloved afar!
What say the Plains—the Plains that stretch along
From hamlet and from field, from fold and byre?
‘Here once toiled one who sang his peasant song
And now reaps harvest ’mid the tribesmen’s fire!
The Spirit of a mightier world than springs
From his poor village led him on
To glory! Yea—to glory!’—Ever sings
The Spirit of the Plains when he is gone!
What say the Hills whence come the Gurkha breed—
The bull-dogs of the East? From crest and vale
Reverberate the echoes, swift they speed
On falling waters or the mountain gale!
‘Our Hillmen brave as lions have gone forth;
They were our sons; we bred them—even we—
To face thy foemen, Islands of the North,
We know their worth and sing it thus to thee!’
What say the Passes? There the requiem
Of battle lingers o’er the undying dead—
‘Our Soldiers of the Sun, whose diadem
Of honour glitters in the nullah bed,
Or by the hillside drear, or dark ravine,
Or on the sangared steep—a solemn ray
That touches thus the thing that once hath been,
With glory—glory!’—So the Passes say!
And so the great world hears and men’s eyes blaze
As each one to his neighbour cries ‘Well done!’
A little thing this speech—this flower of praise,
Yet let it crown our Soldiers of the Sun!
Not here alone—for here we know them well;
But tell our English, waiting on the shore
To welcome back their heroes: ‘Lo! these fell
Even as ours—as brave—for evermore!’
I hear the roar amid the London street:—
The earth hath not its equal, whether it be
For ignorance or knowledge, and the feet
That press therein and eyes that turn to see
Know nothing of our sepoys—let them know
That here be men beneath whose dark skin runs
A battle-virtue kindred with the glow
That fires the leaping pulses of their sons!
’Tis worth proclaiming. Yea, it seems to me
This loyalty—to death—lies close akin
To all the noblest human traits that be,
Engendered whence we know not—yet within
Choice spirits nobly gathered. Lo! we stand,
Needs must, against the world, Yet war’s alarms
Are nothing to our mightiest Motherland,
While Nation circles Nation in her arms!
John Renton Denning. CCXI
SARANSAR
What are the bugles saying
With a strain so long and so loud?
They say that a soldier’s blanket
Is meet for a soldier’s shroud!
They say that their hill-tossed music,
Blown forth of the living breath,
Is full of the victor’s triumph
And sad with the wail of death!
Bugles of Talavera!
What are the bugles saying?
They tell of the falling night,
When a section of dog-tired English
Drew close for a rear-guard fight;
With an officer-boy to lead them,
A lost and an outflanked squad,
By the grace of a half-learned drill book,
And a prayer to the unseen God!
Bugles of Talavera!
What are the bugles saying
Of the stand that was heel to heel?
The click of the quick-pressed lever,
The glint of the naked steel,
The flame of the steady volley,
The hope that was almost gone,
As the leaping horde of the tribesmen
Swept as a tide sweeps on!
Bugles of Talavera!
What are the bugles saying?
They say that the teeth are set,
They say that the breath comes thicker,
And the blood-red Night is wet;
While the rough blunt speech of the English,
The burr of the shires afar,
Falls with a lone brave pathos
’Mid the hills of the Saransar!
Bugles of Talavera!
What are the bugles saying?
They say that the English there
Feel a breath from their island meadows
Like incense fill the air!
They say that they stood for a moment
With their dear ones by their side,
For their spirits swept to the Homeland
Before the English died!
Bugles of Talavera!
And aye are the bugles saying,
While the dust lies low i’ the dust,
The strength of a strong man’s fighting,
The crown of the soldier’s trust—
The wine of a full-brimmed battle,
The peace of the quiet grave,
And a wreath from the hands of glory
Are the guerdon of the brave!
Bugles of Talavera!
John Renton Denning.
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