AFTER CAWNPORE

Fourteen, all told, no more,

Pack'd close within the door

Of that old idol-shrine:

And at them, as they stand,

And from that English band,

The leaden shower went out, and Death proclaim'd them

Mine!

Fourteen against an army; they, no more,

Had‘ scaped Cawnpore.

With each quick volley-flash

The bullets ping and plash:

Yet, though the tropic noon

With furnace-fury broke

The sulphur-curling smoke,

Scarr'd, sear'd, thirst-silenced, hunger-faint, they stood:

And soon

A dusky wall,— death sheltering life,— uprose

Against their foes.

Behind them now is cast

The horror of the past;

The fort that was no fort,

The deep dark-heaving flood

Of foes that broke in blood

On our devoted camp, victims of fiendish sport;

From that last huddling refuge lured to fly,

— And help so nigh!

Down toward the reedy shore

That fated remnant pour,

Had Fear and Death beside;

And other spectres yet

Of darker vision flit,—

Old unforgotten wrongs, the harshness and the pride

Of that imperial race which sway'd the land

By sheer command!

O little hands that strain

A mother's hand in vain

With terror vague and vast:—

Parch'd eyes that cannot shed

One tear upon the head,

A young child's head, too bright for such fell death to blast!

Ah! sadder captive train ne'er filed to doom

Through vengeful Rome!

From Ganges’ reedy shore

The death-boats they unmoor,

Stack'd high with hopeless hearts;

A slowly-drifting freight

Through the red jaws of Fate,

Death-blazing banks between, and flame-wing'd arrow-darts:—

Till down the holy stream those cargoes pour

Their flame and gore.

In feral order slow

The slaughter-barges go,

Martyrs of heathen scorn:

While, saved from flood and fire

To glut the tyrant's ire,

The quick and dead in one, from their red shambles borne,

Maiden and child, in that dark grave they throw,

Our well of woe!

Ah spot on which we gaze

Through Time's all-softening haze,

In peace, on them at peace

And taken home to God!

— O whether‘ neath the sod,

Or sea, or desert sand, what care,— if that release

From this dim shadow-land, through pathways dim,

Bear us to Him!

But those fourteen, the while,

Wrapt in the present, smile

On their grim baffled foe;

Till o'er the wall he heaps

The fuel-pile, and steeps

With all that burns and blasts;— and now, perforce, they go

Hack'd down and thinn'd, beyond that temple-door

But Seven,— no more.

O Elements at strife

With this poor human life,

Stern laws of Nature fair!

By flame constrain'd to fly

The treacherous stream they try,—

And those dark Ganges waves suck down the souls they bear!—

Ah, crowning anguish! Dawn of hope in sight;

Then, final night!

And now, Four heads, no more,

Life's flotsam flung ashore,

They lie:— But not as they

Who o'er a dreadful past

The heart's-ease sigh may cast!

Too worn! too tried!— their lives but given them as a prey!

Whilst all seems now a dream, a nought of nought,

For which they fought!

— O stout Fourteen, who bled

O'erwhelm' d, not vanquished!

In those dark days of blood

How many dared, and died,

And others at their side

Fresh heroes, sprang,— a race that cannot be subdued!

— Like them who pass'd Death's vale, and lived;— the Four

Saved from Cawnpore!