Читать книгу Poems. Volume 1 - George Meredith - Страница 1

Chillanwallah, Chillanwallah!

   Where our brothers fought and bled,

O thy name is natural music

   And a dirge above the dead!

Though we have not been defeated,

   Though we can’t be overcome,

Still, whene’er thou art repeated,

   I would fain that grief were dumb.

Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!

   ’Tis a name so sad and strange,

Like a breeze through midnight harpstrings

   Ringing many a mournful change;

But the wildness and the sorrow

   Have a meaning of their own—

Oh, whereof no glad to-morrow

   Can relieve the dismal tone!

Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!

   ’Tis a village dark and low,

By the bloody Jhelum river

   Bridged by the foreboding foe;

And across the wintry water

   He is ready to retreat,

When the carnage and the slaughter

   Shall have paid for his defeat.

Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!

   ’Tis a wild and dreary plain,

Strewn with plots of thickest jungle,

   Matted with the gory stain.

There the murder-mouthed artillery,

   In the deadly ambuscade,

Wrought the thunder of its treachery

   On the skeleton brigade.

Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!

   When the night set in with rain,

Came the savage plundering devils

   To their work among the slain;

And the wounded and the dying

   In cold blood did share the doom

Of their comrades round them lying,

   Stiff in the dead skyless gloom.

Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!

   Thou wilt be a doleful chord,

And a mystic note of mourning

   That will need no chiming word;

And that heart will leap with anguish

   Who may understand thee best;

But the hopes of all will languish

   Till thy memory is at rest.