Читать книгу Writ in Barracks - Wallace Edgar - Страница 5

Line Clear to Witteputs! I wind around the guarded hill,

And thunder o'er the lean long bridge that spans the sombre stream;

No uptorn rail to devastate, no culvert gap to fill,

And where the outpost feared to ride, I gather up my steam.

(I passed a little mound of earth that bore the cross's sign, —

A Colonel, and a dozen men, who fell to clear the line.)

Line Clear to Belmont: and I feel the ballast shaking down:

My flanges bite the new-laid rail and prove the new-thrust pin.

On either side the purple ridge, the veldt land sickly brown,

The 'distant off' says 'Welcome,' and the 'Home' says 'Come ye in.'

(Two thousand guardsmen rushed the Kop – a score are buried here,

And here are laid some Fusiliers – they fell to give Line Clear.)

Line Clear to Graspan: so I run adown the gentle grade,

Nor notice in my joyful haste the kopje stubble grown,

And wildly bouldered foot to crest where fell a half brigade,

What time the bristling mountain-side with segment shell was sown.

(The mess-deck and the ward-room thinned to give the line pratique

Line Clear from Graspan – so, half-mast the Ensign at the Peak.)

Line Clear: along the new-spliced wires that droop from pole to pole,

By Enslin, where the helio glared fitfully and fleet,

The word is passed across the plain to where the rivers roll, —

To where, tree-fringed in eddying swirls, the Modder meets the Riet.

(In heat and thirst and weariness a hundred dying lay,

A hundred bloody forms grew stiff to give me Right Away.)

Line Clear: I face the grim gaunt range that stretches east and west

('Twas by its base, near Magers farm, that Wauchope's men went down):

I skirt the ridge that hid the guns, and gleefully I breast

The easy rise that brings in view the long-beleaguered town.

(Line Clear: o'er blood, and sweat, and pain, and sorrow's

road I ran,

And every sleeper was a wound, and every rail a man.)