DENNING
CCIX
THE LUCKNOW GARRISON
Still stand thy ruins ’neath the Indian sky,
Memorials eloquent of blood and tears!
O! for the spirit of those days gone by
To wake a strain amid these later years
Worthy of thee and thine! I seem to see,
When thinking on thy consecrated dead,
From thy scarred chambers start
The heroes whom thy fiery travail bred
And made thee—for us English—what thou art!
Green grows the grass around thy crumbling walls
Where glorious Lawrence groaned his life away!
And childhood’s footsteps echo through those halls
Wherein thy wounded and thy dying lay!
While blent with infant laughter seems to rise
The far-off murmur of thy battle roll,
The prayer—the shout—the groan—
Outram’s unselfish chivalry of soul,
And white-haired Havelock’s strong, commanding tone!
Yet, what are names? The genius of the spot,
Born of our womanhood and manhood brave,
Shall fire our children’s children! Ne’er forgot
Shall be the dust of thy historic grave
While Reverence fills the sense with musing calm,
While Glory stirs the pulse of prince or clown,
While blooms on British sod
The glorious flower of our fair renown,
Our English valour and our trust in God!
The memory of the Living! Lo, they stand
Engirt with honour while the day draws in,
An ever lessening and fraternal band
Linked in chivalric glory and akin
To earth’s immortals! Time may bow the frame
And plough deep wrinkles ’mid their honoured scars,
But Death-like Night which brings
To earth the blaze majestic of the stars,
Shall but enhance their glory with his wings!
The memory of the Dead! A pilgrim, I
Have bowed my face before thy honoured shrine,
With pride deep-welling while the moments by
Sped to a human ecstasy divine
Tingling my very blood, to think that they,
Martyrs and victors in our English need,
Were children of the earth—
Yet better—heroes of our island breed
And men and women of our British birth!