TOPIC:

Oh, bitter blew the western wind and chilled us to the bone,
From mountain top to mountain top it made its weary moan,
While we, Strathcona's Horse, rode on, in silence and alone.
The darkness closed around us like a monk's hood gathered tight,
It pressed upon our eyeballs, sealing up the sense of sight,
And mocked us with false flashes of a brain-begotten light.
With straining at the silence grew our hearing thuder-proof;
The moaning blast in vain flung back its echo from the kloof,
The very ground on which we rode struck dumbly to the hoof.
And no man spake, nor dared so much as loose his tethered tongue,
Which else in fevered agony from blackened lips had hung,
But now, with limpet grip compelled, to cheek and palate clung.
Strathcona's Horse had never borne the fear mark on their brow;
The oak sap was their blood - the hews, the supple maple bough;
Their swords were fashioned from the share that shod their prairie plough.
Then why those white, drawn faces? Why those breasts that stain and heave?
Those eyes that see but darkness? And those tongues that parch and cleave?
It was the tale the Zulu scout brought southward yester eve.
It was the same old tale - the farm, the false white flag, the foe;
And four good British lads that fell where murder laid them low.
Strathcona's Horse their purpose knew - the morning, too, should know.
On! on! there's twenty miles and more between us and the prey,
And still the scout, with bleeding feet, directs our weary way,
And still our eyes strain eastward for the coming of the day.
A dark ravine, whose beetling sides o'erhang the path we tread
A faint grey line, a spot of light, with shimmering haze o'erspread
A wreath of smoke - the farm, the farm, six hundred miles ahead.
But see - the Zulu lied. God bless that faithless, perjured black!
Those British lads died not, but live. On yonder chimney stack
Behold, wrapped in the morning mist, our flag, the Union Jack!
Strathcona's Horse rode forward with a swift Canadian swing,
Their hearts with joy o'erflowing, and the teardrops glistening - Ping!
Halt! What was that? Hell's fury! 'twas the Mauser's deadly ring.
Oh, fathomless the treacherous depths within the Boer breast!
It was the foe had raised that flag above their devil's nest,
While stark and stiff four corpses lay where murder bade them rest.
Strathcona's Horse rode forward, though there fell both horse and man;
They spake no word, but every brain conceived the self-same plan:
Through every vein and nerve and thew the self-same purpose ran.
What though the Mausers raked the line, and tore great gaps between?
What though the thick clay walls stood firm, the ambushed foe to screen?
There was a deed to do, whose like the world had seldom seen.
They stormed the palisades, which crashed beneath their furious stroke;
The doors with staves they battered in, the barricades they broke -
And then they bound the fiends within, the Mausers for a yoke.
Swift to the ending of the deed, yet only half begun,
The daylight grows: there's bloody work still waiting to be done
Six corpses swing athwart the face of God's own rising sun.
Bury in peace our own dear dead; - then comrades, ride away;
Yet leave a mark that all may know, who hitherward shall stray,
Strathcona's Horse it was that paid a visit here to-day.
'Twas thus Strathcona's Horse left Vengeance sitting by her shrine,
Where six accursed corpses broke the grey horizon line,
Their flesh to feed the vultures, and their bones to be a sign.