Samuel Mathewson Baylis
In Matabele Land
“SADDLE and mount and away!”—loud the bugles in Durban are pealing:
Carbine and cartridge and girth-buckle, look to it, troopers, and ride!
Ride for your lives and for England! Ride in your hot saddles reeling!
Red in the blaze of their homesteads, the trail in your kin’s blood is dyed.
Up! who be men, and no other—rank, title, or no name, what matter?
Brood of the lion-cub litter, your birthmark’s your passport to-day.
Hard is the ride, and the fight ere they break for their coverts and scatter:
Spring to the bugle’s quick challenge, then, saddle and mount, and away!
“Find them and fight them and stand!” down the line ran the captain’s curt orders—
Hot as the mission’s red embers, they burned to the hearts of the men.
Swift o’er the track’s desolation, tho’ peril each foot of it borders,
On thro’ the assegais’ hurtling and make for the jungle-king’s den!
There, where the waggons are creaking, with ill-gotten booty encumbered,
Rush the Zareba! It weakens—it breaks! but to close as the sand
Follows the swirl of the tide-beat—a handful by thousands outnumbered!—
England shall hear that we failed not to find them and fight them and stand.
Stand for the Queen! Ay, God save her! and save us, for sure there’s no other;
Trapped, with no chance for our lives, let the black devils see we can die.
Scrawl them a line or a letter—sweetheart, wife, sister or mother—
Quick, for their bullets fly faster; a handclasp—“old fellow—goodbye!”
Round up the horses and shoot them—close up the dead comrade’s places—
Pray if you can, but shoot steady—the last cartridge gone!—all is still,
Save for the yells of the victors, that hush as they see the white faces
Kindle when comes the last order: “Men! hats off, God save!”—Ay, He will.
The Coureur-de-Bois
IN the glimmering light of the Old Régime
A figure appears like the flushing gleam
Of sunlight reflected from sparkling stream,
Or jewel without a flaw.
Flashing and fading but leaving a trace
In story and song of a hardy race,
Finely fashioned in form and face—
The Old Coureur-de-Bois.
No loiterer he ’neath the sheltering wing
Of ladies’ bowers where gallants sing.
Thro’ his woodland realm he roved a king!
His untamed will his law.
From the wily savage he learned his trade
Of hunting and wood-craft; of nothing afraid:
Bravely battling, bearing his blade
As a free Coureur-de Bois.
A brush with the foe, a carouse with a friend,
Were equally welcome, and made some amend
For the gloom and silence and hardships that tend
“To shorten one’s life, ma foi!”
A wife in the hamlet, another he’d take—
Some dusky maid—to his camp by the lake;
A rattling, roving, rollicking rake
This gay Coureur-de-Bois.
Then peace to his ashes! He bore his part
For his country’s weal with a brave stout heart
A child of nature, untutored in art,
In his narrow world he saw
But the dawning light of the rising sun
O’er an Empire vast his toil had won.
For doughty deeds and duty done
Salût! Coureur-de-Bois.