Ballads of the War :: :: University of Virginia Library

It was out in the rain and the wind and the groans
I tended the wounded, foe and friend;
I thought with myself that the very stones
Of the grim veldt-side,
If they could, would have cried,
“Doctor, don't touch them; let death make an end!”

And presently, propped by a boulder grey,
A grey and grizzled old Boer I saw;
His whole right hand had been blown away;
But, quiet and calm,
He was reading a Psalm
From a blood-stained book of the ancient Law.

“Make haste and help me,” the old Psalm ran,
“Deliver me! haste to help me, Lord!
Let those who seek my hurt to a man
Be put to shame,
That so Thy name
Be great upon all who trust thy word.”

“Poor am I, Lord: thou knowest how poor;
This hand shall never hold sickle again;
Lord, succour me!” groaned the grey-beard Boer;
“Tarry not! come
To take me home!
Lord, haste Thee, and help me out of this pain!”

And there, as he prayed in the rain and the wind,
To the grey old Boer from the Orange Free State—
The man who had fought for cattle and kind
With his sons, and sons'
Sons less than their guns,
To free his land from the men of their hate—

There came, at his call to the God of the Psalm,
The Helper of helpless after the fray;
And his face grew pale with a wonderful calm,
And the Psalm-book dropped,
And the blood-jet stopped,
And the pain and the sorrow had passed away.

Note.—After one of the late battles in Natal, an old Boer was found badly wounded, propped up among some rough boulders upon a kopje side; his rifle was laid idly by him, and the old man appeared to be waiting for death, and was quietly reading his Bible.