Читать книгу Valiant Dust - Percival Christopher Wren - Страница 7

On in the snow—on in the snow—

Blinded and numbed, the soldiers go.

With footfall silenter than theirs

Death dogs their steps: and, unawares,

Strikes down his victims one by one.

Pursuit is distanced; doom begun.

Frost-bitten fingers, stiff with cold,

Seem frozen to the gun they hold.

The icicles hang on beard and hair;

The breath like smoke goes out in the air;

Till reason and thought begin to wane.

And only the dull, blind sense of pain,

And the instinct of Duty till Death, remain.

On in the snow—on in the snow—

The cruel, drifting, deadly snow—

They march in silence, with muffled tread:

Till one of them stumbles,—and drops behind, dead!

And the others shudder, and glance around—

For they hear, growing nearer, an ominous sound

In the woods—the dismal howl

Of the wolves that after them stealthily prowl.

By open waste: by dreary wood:

By rivers black and frozen flood—

On in the snow—on in the snow—

Ever, with thinning ranks, they go.

Clifford Harrison.