Select Poetry.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 34, 16 September 1871, Page 17

Select Poetry.

" CHARGE."—SEDAN, 1870. Trumpeters, call for order of fight, Place your divisions by bank and trench, Much shall be done ere the fall or night: There come the Prussians —here stand the French. A burst of smoke along the lines, A rattle and roll and a roar of guns ; And death to the man that shrinks and shuns His ordered path on the rough inclines! Here, on the hill by La Garenne, See the hosts of the French arrayed : They are Soldiers, and they are Men; Who shall make them afraid! Cuirassiers, prepare for the Germans Scatter our infantry up the hight j Yea, for all their prayers and sermons, They know how to fight! Hark—the mouths of the guns, as they rattle, cry, " Death looms horrible, dark, and large"Dare them ! " Vive la France" for your battle cry: Chaegb! A dash of the hoofs, and a whirl of plumes, A " vive" from the Foot as they thunder by, A roar of cheers from the Cuirassiers, And the blades flash out like flames on high. The rider laughs, and the charger fumes, Each with the fire of blood in his eye ; There are no fears for the Cuirassiers! They know how to die. And here they are met With bayonets set, And flank and rear with bullet and shell ; Not only at front Is the battle's brunt, There's a thinning of inner ranks, as well j And, hot and hard, It is thrust and guard, Slay as they can, be slain if they must: Horse and man To press to the van, And churn with their teeth the gore and dust; Thus they close With an army of foes, With neither space nor the will to swerve, Stern and fast, Each man to the last, With quivering steel and iron of nerve ; Till battered, and shelled, And foiled, and felled, Tens by tens they dwindle —they fall; Heap on heap Death grips them with sleep, And Bcarce a man lives of the ranks of them all I The end is at hand. This misty heat Of wrath and ruin inflames our sight j Our hearts are hot, our pulses fleet, We cannot perceive, or judge aright. Yet it shall be, that when Time brings The cool that lies in the fan of his wings, And the rolling away of dark from light; And when the age's pitiful things, The hates of peoples, the scorns of kings, Succomb to his passionless might; Men shall not fret of the wrong or right— That is lost in the long gone by— They shall say, the German—He knew how to fight; The Frank—He knew how to die. —" Cassell's Magazine."