Читать книгу A Treasury of Canadian Verse, with Brief Biographical Notes - Группа авторов - Страница 20

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"SADDLE and mount and away!"—loud the bugles in Durban are pealing:

Carbine and cartridge and girth-buckle, look to it, troopers, and ride!

Ride for your lives and for England! Ride in your hot saddles reeling!

Red in the blaze of their homesteads, the trail in your kin's blood is dyed.

Up! who be men, and no other—rank, title, or no name, what matter?

Brood of the lion-cub litter, your birthmark's your passport to-day.

Hard is the ride, and the fight ere they break for their coverts and scatter:

Spring to the bugle's quick challenge, then, saddle and mount, and away!

"Find them and fight them and stand!" down the line ran the captain's curt orders—

Hot as the mission's red embers, they burned to the hearts of the men.

Swift o'er the track's desolation, tho' peril each foot of it borders,

On thro' the assegais' hurtling and make for the jungle-king's den!

There, where the waggons are creaking, with ill-gotten booty encumbered,

Rush the Zareba! It weakens—it breaks! but to close as the sand

Follows the swirl of the tide-beat—a handful by thousands outnumbered!—

England shall hear that we failed not to find them and fight them and stand.

Stand for the Queen! Ay, God save her! and save us, for sure there's no other;

Trapped, with no chance for our lives, let the black devils see we can die.

Scrawl them a line or a letter—sweetheart, wife, sister or mother—

Quick, for their bullets fly faster; a handclasp—"old fellow—goodbye!"

Round up the horses and shoot them—close up the dead comrade's places—

Pray if you can, but shoot steady—the last cartridge gone!—all is still,

Save for the yells of the victors, that hush as they see the white faces

Kindle when comes the last order: "Men! hats off, God save!"—Ay, He will.