Ay, but the word, if I could have said it,
I by no terrors of hell perplext;
Hard to be silent and have no credit
From man in this world, or reward in the next;
None to bear witness and reckon the cost
Of the name that is saved by the life that is lost.
I must be gone to the crowd untold
Of men by the cause which they served unknown,
Who moulder in myriad graves of old;
Never a story and never a stone
Tells of the martyrs who die like me,
Just for the pride of the old countree.
Sir Alfred Lyall.
WEBB
CCVI
THE RESIDENCY CHURCHYARD
From domes and palaces I bent my way
Where, like some Titan by Jove’s thunder marred,
From the old battered portal-towers that guard
The storied ruins of a glorious fray.
In patient stillness house and bastion lay,
As they had fallen; for the fight was hard
That saw their walls by myriad bullets scarred,
When those few steadfast warriors stood at bay.
There, by the English tombs of those that fell
In that fierce struggle ’twixt the East and West,
A few green mounds are seen, where peaceful rest
India’s brave sons who perished fighting well
For England too. What heart its feud can keep
Beside these graves where our dark comrades sleep?
William Trego Webb.