POETRY.
TRUMPET AND FLAG.
THE last bugle's dying echoes falter down the narrow valley The doubtful battle tarried in so long : As turning from their headlong charge the scattered horse- men rally, The chiming rocks repeat that fading song.
From the heights where eagles hover, day-dark clefts the buck leap over, The thousand giant voices of the crag, In reverberating chorus speed the musical, sonorous Silver summons of the Trumpet to the Flag : "Awake ! awake ! your splendid robe ontshake !
Float proudly, lovely Sister, for your mighty Brother's sake The unanswered grins have spoken : we have conquered : they are broken, As the mists of morn before the morning break."
With a mountain-ash for neighbour in a chasm thunder.
rifted, Struck in sodden turf beneath a stormy sky, Rose the Flag, round whose encumbered staff the uncounted dead were drifted Who died to set its haughty folds so high.
But she trailed her drooping vesture with a mourner's heed- less gesture, Murm'ring : "Yea, and should my 'broidered skirts be spread, When the children of my glory lie about me rent and gory : All the faithful ones who followed where I led?
Alas! alas their faces in the grass : The breezes lift their draggled plumes to flout them as they pass.
0 Thou cruel mighty Brother, thou did'at cry them on each other With the breath that fills thy throat of thrilling brass I" Then swift upon those tender tones of womanly compassion, Like sword from sheath the ringing answer sped : "Who flies the kiss of steel shall find his end in worser fashion, A straw death, strangled slowly on his bed.
Let the slave, the sot, the coward, by ignoble fears devoured, Count each measured heart-beat, spare their hoarded breath, Yet the traitors shall be hunted by the fate they never fronted : These thy children may not taste that second death. Away away ! to seek some noble fray, From pleasant crimes of genial peace, that soul and body slay ; From the sin that still deceives you, till the sated demon leaves you, And the clay-begotten brute goes back to clay."
He said; and straight his loud last word a score of pipes set playing To bid the victors close their ranks again.
And growling as old soldiers growl, but sulkily obeying, The muttering drams took up the deep refrain.
While the banner, in the vaward, spread her wings to waft them forward, By mane a stubborn combat stained and torn, On the opal sky of even, ere she vanished in clear heaven To fresher fights by younger warriors borne.
And lone and chill the night wind swept the hill, When o'er the yet unburied slain that strange dispute grew still: The old feud our kind inherit of the warring soul and spirit; Man's heart, and man's indomitable will.
EDWARD SYDNEY TYLEE.
Previous page
