Ballads of the War | ||
At the Burial of General Wauchope
“The flowers of the forest are all weed away!”
Light from the blood of the sunset sky is failing,
Long from our hearts has faded all the day.
Stream that ran red with our passion and our gore!
Here, by their shallow grave, forty men are lying,
Men who shall hear Modder sobbing so no more.
Men with fierce lips unloosened still in death,
Men praised in peace, and the first of warrior races
Dead—ere a bayonet was drawn from its sheath.
What do they look for so fixedly and fain?
They look for the laird whom his comrades four are bearing.
They wait for the general to lead them once again.
Arms all reversed, but as proud as on parade,
Comes with the chieftain who faced his doom so scornfully,
All that is left of them—the Highlanders' Brigade.
Mingle their tollings with the pipers' sound,
Hark! lamentations of the Niddry people
Mourning in pit-villages, and moaning underground.
Greet them again with a smile and merry word?
You, with the laird's heart of honour ever near them;
They, with their honour for your home-love and your sword.
Rest with your Highlanders, painless, battlefree!
Mouths firmly-set, rifles gripped and fist fierce shaken,
These wake and watch, these avengers shall be.
Love yet may bloom by fateful Modder shore!
But never hearts shall hear with such appealing
Pipes play o'er fallen ones, “Lochaber no more.”
Note.—The description of the burial of General Wauchope given by the Daily News correspondent is as follows:—
“Three hundred yards to the rear of the little township of Modder River, just as the sun was sinking in a blaze of African splendour, on the evening of Tuesday, the 13th of December, a long shallow grave lay exposed in the breast of the veldt. To the westward the broad river, fringed with trees, ran murmuringly, to the eastward the heights still held by the enemy scowled menacingly; north and south the veldt undulated peacefully; a few paces to the northward of that grave fifty Highlanders lay, dressed as they had fallen on the field of battle; they had followed their chief to the field, and they were to follow him to the grave. How grim and stern those dead men looked as they lay face upward to the sky, with great hands clenched in the last death agony, and brows still knitted with the stern lust of the strife in which they had fallen. The plaids dear to every Highland clan were represented there, and, as I looked, out of the distance came the sound of the pipes;
Right up to the grave they marched, then broke away in companies, until the General lay in the shallow grave with a Scottish square of armed men around him; only the dead man's son and a small remnant of his officers stood with the chaplain and the pipers whilst the solemn service of the Church was spoken. Then once again the pipes pealed out, and “Lochaber No More” cut through the stillness like a cry of pain, until one could almost hear the widow in her Highland home moaning for the soldier she would welcome back no more. Then, as if touched by the magic of one thought, the soldiers turned their tear-damp eyes from the still form in the shallow grave towards the heights where Cronje, the “lion of Africa,” and his soldiers stood. Then every cheek flushed crimson, and the strong jaws set like steel, and the veins on the hands that clasped the rifle handles swelled almost to bursting with the fervour of the grip, and that look from those silent armed men spoke more eloquently than ever spoke the tongues of orators. For on each frowning face the spirit of vengeance sat, and each sparkling eye asked silently for blood.”
Ballads of the War | ||