rrender
Never breathed the word retire.

Still they weighed the dreadful chances,
Still they gathered up their strength,
By invincible advances
Steeled to win the prize at length.
Fate-like their resolve to sever
Those gaunt bonds of grim despair,
And within the breach for ever
England's honour to repair.

Came relief at last, endeavour,
Stern, magnificent, and true,
Hoping on and fighting ever,
Forced its gory passage through.
All the rage of pent-up forces,
All the passion seeking vent
Out of vast and solemn sources,
Here renewed their sacrament;

In the rapture of a greeting
For which thousands fought and bled,
With the saved and saviours meeting
Over our Imperial dead.
Witnesses unseen but tested
Lived again as grander men,
And their awful shadow rested
With a benediction then;

One who with his wondrous talent
Conquered more than even the sword,
And among the gay and gallant
By his pen was crowned lord.
There they lie in silence lowly
Which no battle now can wake,
And the ground is ever holy
For our English heroes' sake.

THE SIX-INCH GUN.

(From the Christmas number of the _Bombshell_, published in Ladysmith
during the siege.)

There is a famous hill looks down,
Five miles away, on Ladysmith town,
With a long flat ridge that meets the sky
Almost a thousand feet on high.
And on the ridge there is mounted one
Long-range, terrible six-inch gun.

And down in the street a bugle is blown,
When the cloud of smoke on the sky is thrown,
For it's sixty seconds before the roar
Reverberates o'er, and a second more
Till the shell comes down with a whiz and stun
From that long-range, terrible six-inch gun.

And men and women walk up and down
The long, hot streets of Ladysmith town,
And the housewives walk in the usual round,
And the children play till the warning sound--