After Cawnpore
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 more,
Had 'scaped Cawnpore.
With each quick volley-flash
The bullets ping and plash:
Yet, though the tropic noon
With furnace-fury broke
The sulphur-curling smoke,
Scarr'd, sear'd, thirst-silenced, hunger-faint, they stood:
And soon
A dusky wall,--death sheltering life,--uprose
Against their foes.
Behind them now is cast
The horror of the past;
The fort that was no fort,
The deep dark-heaving flood
Of foes that broke in blood
On our devoted camp, victims of fiendish sport;
From that last huddling refuge lured to fly,
--And help so nigh!
Down toward the reedy shore
That fated remnant pour,
Had Fear and Death beside;
And other spectres yet
Of darker vision flit,--
Old unforgotten wrongs, the harshness and the pride
Of that imperial race which sway'd the land
By sheer command!
O little hands that strain
A mother's hand in vain
With terror vague and vast:--
Parch'd eyes that cannot shed
One tear upon the head,
A young child's head, too bright for such fell death to blast!
Ah! sadder captive train ne'er filed to doom
Through vengeful Rome!
From Ganges' reedy shore
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poem by Francis Turner Palgrave
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