Songs of Action

Away o’er the desert careering.
Then he turned with a softened face,
And loosened the strap of his cartridge-case,
While his thoughts flew back to the dear old place
In the sunny Hampshire clearing.

The young boy-private, glancing back,
Saw the Bedouins’ wild attack,
And heard the sharp Martini crack.
But as he gazed, already
The fierce fanatic Arab band
Was closing in on every hand,
Until one tawny swirl of sand,
Concealed them in its eddy.

* * * * *

A squadron of British horse that night,
Galloping hard in the shadowy light,
Came on the scene of that last stern fight,
And found the Corporal lying
Silent and grim on the trampled sand,
His rifle grasped in his stiffened hand,
With the warrior pride of one who died
’Mid a ring of the dead and the dying.

And still when twilight shadows fall,
After the evening bugle call,
In bivouac or in barrack-hall,
His comrades speak of the Corporal,
His death and his devotion.
And there are some who like to say
That perhaps a hidden meaning lay
In the words he spoke, and that the day
When his rough bold spirit passed away
Was the day that he won promotion.

A FORGOTTEN TALE

[The scene of this ancient fight, recorded by Froissart, is still called ‘Altura de los Inglesos.’ Five hundred years later Wellington’s soldiers were fighting on the same ground.]

‘Say, what saw you on the hill,
Campesino Garcia?’
‘I saw my brindled heifer there,
A trail of bowmen, spent and bare,
And a little man on a sorrel mare
Riding slow before them.’

‘Say, what saw you in the vale,
Campesino Garcia?’
‘There I saw my lambing ewe
And an army riding through,
Thick and brave the pennons flew
From the lances o’er them.’

‘Then what saw you on the hill,
Campesino Garcia?’
‘I saw beside the milking byre,
White with want and black with mire,
The little man with eyes afire
Marshalling his bowmen.’

‘Then what saw you in the vale,
Campesino Garcia?’
‘There I saw my bullocks twain,
And amid my uncut grain
All the hardy men of Spain
Spurring for their foemen.’

‘Nay, but there is more to tell,
Campesino Garcia!’
‘I could not bide the end to view;
I had graver things to do
Tending on the lambing ewe
Down among the clover.’

‘Ah, but tell me what you heard,
Campesino Garcia!’
‘Shouting from the mountain-side,
Shouting until eventide;
But it dwindled and it died
Ere milking time was over.’

‘Nay, but saw you nothing more,
Campesino Garcia?’
‘Yes, I saw them lying there,
The little man and sorrel mare;
And in their ranks the bowmen fair,
With their staves before them.’

‘And the hardy men of Spain,
Campesino Garcia?’
‘Hush! but we are Spanish too;
More I may not say to you:
May God’s benison, like dew,
Gently settle o’er them.’

PENNARBY MINE

Pennarby shaft is dark and steep,