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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=395973" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Eland’s River</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">IT WAS on the fourth of August, as five hundred of us lay<br>In the camp at Eland’s River, came a shell from De La Rey—<br>We were dreaming of home faces,<br>Of the old familiar places,<br>And the gum-trees and the sunny plains five thousand miles away—<br>But the challenge woke and found us<br>With four thousand rifles round us;<br>And Death stood laughing at us at the breaking of the day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hell belched upon our borders, and the battle had begun.<br>Our Maxims jammed: We faced them with one muzzle-loading gun.<br>East, south, and west, and nor’ward<br>Their shells came screaming forward<br>As we threw the sconces round us in the first light of the sun.<br>The thin air shook with thunder<br>As they raked us fore and under,<br>And the cordon closed around us, as they held us—eight to one.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We got the Maxims going, and the field-gun into place<br>(She stilled the growling of a Krupp upon our southern face);<br>Round the crimson ring of battle<br>Swiftly ran the deadly rattle<br>As our rifles searched their fore-lines with a desperate menace;<br>Who would wish himself away<br>Fighting in our ranks that day<br>For the glory of Australia and the honour of the race?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But our horse-lines soon were shambles, and our cattle lying dead<br>(When twelve guns rake two acres there is little room to tread),<br>All day long we heard the drumming<br>Of the Mauser bullets humming,<br>And at night their guns, day-sighted, rained fierce havoc overhead.<br>Twelve long days and nights together,<br>Through the cold and bitter weather,<br>We lay grim behind the sconces, and returned them lead for lead.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They called us to surrender, and they let their cannon lag;<br>They offered us our freedom for the striking of the flag—<br>Army stores were there in mounds,<br>Worth a hundred thousand pounds,<br>And we lay battered round them behind trench and sconce and crag.<br>But we sent the answer in,<br>They could take what they could win—<br>We hadn’t come five thousand miles to fly the coward’s rag.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We saw the guns of Carrington come on and, fall away;<br>We saw the ranks of Kitchener across the kopje grey—<br>For the sun was shining then<br>Upon twenty thousand men—<br>And we laughed, because we knew, in spite of hell-fire and delay,<br>On Australia’s page for ever<br>We had written Eland’s River—<br>We had written it for ever and a day!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=George+Essex+Evans">George Essex Evans</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=395973" data-title="Eland’s River de George Essex Evans" data-description="IT WAS on the fourth of August, as five hundred of us lay
In the camp at Eland’s River, came a shell from De La Rey—
We were dreaming of home faces,
Of the old familiar places,
And the gum-trees and the sunny plains five thousand miles away—..."></div>
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