Patriotic Song / A book of English verse, being an anthology of the patriotic poetry of the British Empire, from the defeat of the Spanish Armada till the death of Queen Victoria

by Unknown

Watchers of Twilight (Montreal: T. H. Warren, 1894). By permission of the author. Line 2 is a quotation from William Watson’s Last Words to the Colonies.

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In Various Moods (Toronto: William Briggs, 1894). By permission of the author.

VI.—INDIA

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Miscellaneous Verses (Calcutta: Sanders, Cones & Co., 1848).

Gunga (l. 49)=the Ganges.

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Cornhill Magazine (September, 1868), and Verses Written in India (Kegan Paul & Co., 1889). By permission of author and publishers.

The massacre which suggested this poem took place near Mohundi, in Oudh (June, 1857). The lives of all the English prisoners would have been spared had they consented to profess Mahometanism by repeating the usual short formula.