The hour is come! The signal, “On, men, on!”
Sends from the trenches hundreds tow’rds the town.
Like greyhounds straining on the slips, they are gone,
While grape and shell in showers come pouring down,
To where the grisly bastion-breach doth frown.
Away, away, o’er slippery tidal shore,
O’er seaweed dank and shell-incrusted stone.
None stoops to pick, though strewn the seabeach o’er,
Save those whom other shells make stoop to rise no more!
XX.