John Renton Denning.
CCX
SOLDIERS OF IND
Men of the Hills and men of the Plains, men of the Isles and Sea,
Brothers in bond of battle and blood wherever the battle may be;
A song and a thought for your fighting line, a song for the march and camp,
A song to the beat of the rolling drums, a song to the measured tramp,
When the feet lift up on the dusty road ’neath sun and moon and star,
And the prayer is prayed by mother and maid for their best beloved afar!
What say the Plains—the Plains that stretch along
From hamlet and from field, from fold and byre?
‘Here once toiled one who sang his peasant song
And now reaps harvest ’mid the tribesmen’s fire!
The Spirit of a mightier world than springs
From his poor village led him on
To glory! Yea—to glory!’—Ever sings
The Spirit of the Plains when he is gone!
What say the Hills whence come the Gurkha breed—
The bull-dogs of the East? From crest and vale
Reverberate the echoes, swift they speed
On falling waters or the mountain gale!
‘Our Hillmen brave as lions have gone forth;
They were our sons; we bred them—even we—
To face thy foemen, Islands of the North,
We know their worth and sing it thus to thee!’
What say the Passes? There the requiem
Of battle lingers o’er the undying dead—
‘Our Soldiers of the Sun, whose diadem
Of honour glitters in the nullah bed,
Or by the hillside drear, or dark ravine,
Or on the sangared steep—a solemn ray
That touches thus the thing that once hath been,
With glory—glory!’—So the Passes say!
And so the great world hears and men’s eyes blaze
As each one to his neighbour cries ‘Well done!’
A little thing this speech—this flower of praise,
Yet let it crown our Soldiers of the Sun!
Not here alone—for here we know them well;
But tell our English, waiting on the shore
To welcome back their heroes: ‘Lo! these fell
Even as ours—as brave—for evermore!’
I hear the roar amid the London street:—
The earth hath not its equal, whether it be
For ignorance or knowledge, and the feet
That press therein and eyes that turn to see
Know nothing of our sepoys—let them know
That here be men beneath whose dark skin runs
A battle-virtue kindred with the glow
That fires the leaping pulses of their sons!
’Tis worth proclaiming. Yea, it seems to me
This loyalty—to death—lies close akin
To all the noblest human traits that be,
Engendered whence we know not—yet within
Choice spirits nobly gathered. Lo! we stand,
Needs must, against the world, Yet war’s alarms
Are nothing to our mightiest Motherland,
While Nation circles Nation in her arms!