Part 2

“God knows that for myself I’ve scanty care; Past scrimmages have proved as much to all; In Eastern lands and South I’ve had my share Both of the blade and ball.

“And where those villains ripped me in the flitch With their old iron in my early time, I’m apt at change of wind to feel a twitch, Or at a change of clime.

“And what my mirror shows me in the morning Has more of blotch and wrinkle than of bloom; My eyes, too, heretofore all glasses scorning, Have just a touch of rheum . . .

“Now sounds ‘The Girl I’ve left behind me,’—Ah, The years, the ardours, wakened by that tune! Time was when, with the crowd’s farewell ‘Hurrah!’ ’Twould lift me to the moon.

“But now it’s late to leave behind me one Who if, poor soul, her man goes underground, Will not recover as she might have done In days when hopes abound.

“She’s waving from the wharfside, palely grieving, As down we draw . . . Her tears make little show, Yet now she suffers more than at my leaving Some twenty years ago.

“I pray those left at home will care for her! I shall come back; I have before; though when The Girl you leave behind you is a grandmother, Things may not be as then.”

THE GOING OF THE BATTERY WIVES’ LAMENT (November 2, 1899)

O IT was sad enough, weak enough, mad enough— Light in their loving as soldiers can be— First to risk choosing them, leave alone losing them Now, in far battle, beyond the South Sea! . . .

—Rain came down drenchingly; but we unblenchingly Trudged on beside them through mirk and through mire, They stepping steadily—only too readily!— Scarce as if stepping brought parting-time nigher.

III

Great guns were gleaming there, living things seeming there, Cloaked in their tar-cloths, upmouthed to the night; Wheels wet and yellow from axle to felloe, Throats blank of sound, but prophetic to sight.

Gas-glimmers drearily, blearily, eerily Lit our pale faces outstretched for one kiss, While we stood prest to them, with a last quest to them Not to court perils that honour could miss.

Sharp were those sighs of ours, blinded these eyes of ours, When at last moved away under the arch All we loved. Aid for them each woman prayed for them, Treading back slowly the track of their march.

Someone said: “Nevermore will they come: evermore Are they now lost to us.” O it was wrong! Though may be hard their ways, some Hand will guard their ways, Bear them through safely, in brief time or long.

VII

—Yet, voices haunting us, daunting us, taunting us, Hint in the night-time when life beats are low Other and graver things . . . Hold we to braver things, Wait we, in trust, what Time’s fulness shall show.

AT THE WAR OFFICE, LONDON (Affixing the Lists of Killed and Wounded: December, 1899)

LAST year I called this world of gain-givings The darkest thinkable, and questioned sadly If my own land could heave its pulse less gladly, So charged it seemed with circumstance whence springs The tragedy of things.

Yet at that censured time no heart was rent Or feature blanched of parent, wife, or daughter By hourly blazoned sheets of listed slaughter; Death waited Nature’s wont; Peace smiled unshent From Ind to Occident.

A CHRISTMAS GHOST-STORY

SOUTH of the Line, inland from far Durban, A mouldering soldier lies—your countryman. Awry and doubled up are his gray bones, And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans Nightly to clear Canopus: “I would know By whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening Law Of Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified, Was ruled to be inept, and set aside? And what of logic or of truth appears In tacking ‘Anno Domini’ to the years? Near twenty-hundred livened thus have hied, But tarries yet the Cause for which He died.”

Christmas-eve, 1899.

THE DEAD DRUMMER

THEY throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest Uncoffined—just as found: His landmark is a kopje-crest That breaks the veldt around; And foreign constellations west Each night above his mound.

Young Hodge the Drummer never knew— Fresh from his Wessex home— The meaning of the broad Karoo, The Bush, the dusty loam, And why uprose to nightly view Strange stars amid the gloam.

III

Yet portion of that unknown plain Will Hodge for ever be; His homely Northern breast and brain Grow up a Southern tree. And strange-eyed constellations reign His stars eternally.