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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=544392" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>After Cawnpore</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">June: 1857</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Fourteen, all told, no more,<br>Pack'd close within the door<br>Of that old idol-shrine:<br>And at them, as they stand,<br>And from that English band,<br>The leaden shower went out, and Death proclaim'd them<br>_Mine_!<br>Fourteen against an army; they, no more,<br>Had 'scaped Cawnpore.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With each quick volley-flash<br>The bullets ping and plash:<br>Yet, though the tropic noon<br>With furnace-fury broke<br>The sulphur-curling smoke,<br>Scarr'd, sear'd, thirst-silenced, hunger-faint, they stood:<br>And soon<br>A dusky wall,--death sheltering life,--uprose<br>Against their foes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Behind them now is cast<br>The horror of the past;<br>The fort that was no fort,<br>The deep dark-heaving flood<br>Of foes that broke in blood<br>On our devoted camp, victims of fiendish sport;<br>From that last huddling refuge lured to fly,<br>--And help so nigh!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Down toward the reedy shore<br>That fated remnant pour,<br>Had Fear and Death beside;<br>And other spectres yet<br>Of darker vision flit,--<br>Old unforgotten wrongs, the harshness and the pride<br>Of that imperial race which sway'd the land<br>By sheer command!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O little hands that strain<br>A mother's hand in vain<br>With terror vague and vast:--<br>Parch'd eyes that cannot shed<br>One tear upon the head,<br>A young child's head, too bright for such fell death to blast!<br>Ah! sadder captive train ne'er filed to doom<br>Through vengeful Rome!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">From Ganges' reedy shore<br>The death-boats they unmoor,<br>Stack'd high with hopeless hearts;<br>A slowly-drifting freight<br>Through the red jaws of Fate,<br>Death-blazing banks between, and flame-wing'd arrow-darts:--<br>Till down the holy stream those cargoes pour<br>Their flame and gore.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In feral order slow<br>The slaughter-barges go,<br>Martyrs of heathen scorn:<br>While, saved from flood and fire<br>To glut the tyrant's ire,<br>The quick and dead in one, from their red shambles borne,<br>Maiden and child, in that dark grave they throw,<br>Our well of woe!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah spot on which we gaze<br>Through Time's all-softening haze,<br>In peace, on them at peace<br>And taken home to God!<br>--O whether 'neath the sod,<br>Or sea, or desert sand, what care,--if that release<br>From this dim shadow-land, through pathways dim,<br>Bear us to Him!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But those fourteen, the while,<br>Wrapt in the present, smile<br>On their grim baffled foe;<br>Till o'er the wall he heaps<br>The fuel-pile, and steeps<br>With all that burns and blasts;--and now, perforce, they go<br>Hack'd down and thinn'd, beyond that temple-door<br>But Seven,--no more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O Elements at strife<br>With this poor human life,<br>Stern laws of Nature fair!<br>By flame constrain'd to fly<br>The treacherous stream they try,--<br>And those dark Ganges waves suck down the souls they bear!--<br>Ah, crowning anguish! Dawn of hope in sight;<br>Then, final night!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And now, Four heads, no more,<br>Life's flotsam flung ashore,<br>They lie:--But not as they<br>Who o'er a dreadful past<br>The heart's-ease sigh may cast!<br>Too worn! too tried!--their lives but given them as a prey!<br>Whilst all seems now a dream, a nought of nought,<br>For which they fought!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">--O stout Fourteen, who bled<br>O'erwhelm'd, not vanquished!<br>In those dark days of blood<br>How many dared, and died,<br>And others at their side<br>Fresh heroes, sprang,--a race that cannot be subdued!<br>--Like them who pass'd Death's vale, and lived;--the Four<br>Saved from Cawnpore!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Francis+Turner+Palgrave">Francis Turner Palgrave</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=544392" data-title="After Cawnpore de Francis Turner Palgrave" data-description="June: 1857

Fourteen, all told, no more,
Pack'd close within the door
Of that old idol-shrine:
And at them, as they stand,
And from that English band,
The leaden shower went out, and Death proclaim'd them
_Mine_!
Fourteen against an army; they, no..."></div>
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