(DARGAI, OCTOBER 20TH, 1897)
Who's for the Gathering, who's for the Fair?
(Gay goes the Gordon to a fight)
The bravest of the brave are at dead-lock there,
(Highlanders! march! by the right!)
There are bullets by the hundred buzzing in the air;
There are bonny lads lying on the hillside bare;
But the Gordons know what the Gordons dare
When they hear the pipers playing!
The happiest English heart to-day
(Gay goes the Gordon to a fight)
Is the heart of the Colonel, hide it as he may
(Steady there! steady on the right!)
He sees his work and he sees the way,
He knows his time and the word to say,
And he's thinking of the tune that the Gordons play
When he sets the pipers playing!
Rising, roaring, rushing like the tide,
(Gay goes the Gordon to a fight)
They're up through the fire-zone, not to be denied;
(Bayonets! and charge! by the right!)
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Thirty bullets straight where the rest went wide,
And thirty lads are lying on the bare hillside;
But they passed in the hour of the Gordons' pride,
To the skirl of the pipers' playing.
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He Fell Among Thieves
"Ye have robbed," said he, "ye have slaughtered and made an end,
Take your ill-got plunder, and bury the dead:
What will ye more of your guest and sometime friend?"
"Blood for our blood," they said.
He laughed: "If one may settle the score for five,
I am ready; but let the reckoning stand till day:
I have loved the sunlight as dearly as any alive."
"You shall die at dawn," said they.