CCXXIII
THE WAR OF THE FUTURE There are boys to-day in the city slum and the home of wealth and pride
Who’ll have one home when the storm is come, and fight for it side by side,
Who’ll hold the cliffs ’gainst the armoured hells that batter a coasted town,
Or grimly die in a hail of shells when the walls come crashing down;
And many a pink-white baby girl, the queen of her home to-day,
Shall see the wings of the tempest whirl the mist of our dawn away—
Shall live to shudder and stop her ears to the thud of the distant gun,
And know the sorrow that has no tears when a battle is lost or won,—
As a mother or wife, in the years to come, will kneel, mild-eyed and white,
And pray to God in her darkened home for the ‘men in the fort to-night.’
But, O! if the cavalry charge again as they did when the world was wide,
’Twill be grand in the ranks of a thousand men in that glorious race to ride,
And strike for all that is true and strong, for all that is grand and brave,
And all that ever shall be, so long as man has a soul to save.
He must lift the saddle, and close his ‘wings,’ and shut his angels out,
And steel his heart for the end of things, who’d ride with the stockman scout,
When the race is rode on the battle track, and the waning distance hums,
And the shelled sky shrieks or the rifles crack like stockwhips amongst the gums—
And the ‘straight’ is reached, and the field is ‘gapped,’ and the hoof-torn sward grows red
With the blood of those who are handicapped with iron and steel and lead;
And the gaps are filled, though unseen by eyes, with the spirit and with the shades
Of the world-wide rebel dead who’ll rise and rush with the Bush Brigades.
All creeds and trades will have soldiers there—give every class its due—
And there’ll be many a clerk to spare for the pride of the jackeroo.
They’ll fight for honour, and fight for love, and a few will fight for gold,
For the devil below, and for God above, as our fathers fought of old;
And some half-blind with exultant tears, and some stiff-lipped, stern-eyed,
For the pride of a thousand after-years and the old eternal pride.
The soul of the world they will feel and see in the chase and the grim retreat—
They’ll know the glory of victory—and the grandeur of defeat.
They’ll tell the tales of the ‘nights before’ and the tales of the ship and fort,
Till the sons of Australia take to war as their fathers took to sport,
Their breath come deep and their eyes grow bright at the tales of chivalry,
And every boy will want to fight, no matter what cause it be—
When the children run to the doors and cry, ‘O, mother, the troops are come!’
And every heart in the town leaps high at the first loud thud of the drum.
They’ll know, apart from its mystic charm, what music is at last,
When, proud as a boy with a broken arm, the regiment marches past;
And the veriest wreck in the drink-fiend’s clutch, no matter how low or mean,
Will feel, when he hears the march, a touch of the man he might have been.
And fools, when the fiends of war are out and the city skies aflame,
Will have something better to talk about than a sister’s or brother’s shame,
Will have something nobler to do by far than to jest at a friend’s expense,
Or to blacken a name in a public bar or over a backyard fence.
And this you learn from the libelled past (though its methods were somewhat rude),
A nation’s born when the shells fall fast, or its lease of life renewed;—
We in part atone for the ghoulish strife—for the crimes of the peace we boast—
And the better part of a people’s life in the storm comes uppermost.
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