Their bones lie glistening on the veldt, their shoes are rusted red,
They are gone where spur and rifle are at rest,
Good dreams to all that legion of the blind, obedient dead!
Good pasture in their islands of the blest!
Knowing nothing of the battle, recking nothing if they won
When the echoes of the last shot died away;
They are dreaming of the far off bush and creeks, the shade and sun,
And the gallops at the breaking of the day.
Did they wonder at the trumpet-call that uged them to the onset,
And the harder, tenser hand upon the rein,
Than the hand that held them steady for the station roofs at sunset,
Or the girl across a dozen miles of plain?
When the purple dusk grows deeper and the four white stars look down,
And an eastern wind blows oversea from home
To their white bones, shining silver, from the bush and from the town,
Does a sigh of dear remembrance never come?
When the mob breaks through the timber, do the stockmen never sigh –
Do their hearts in idle pipe-dreams never yearn
For those horses in their long sleep where we sent them out to die,
To an exile past retrieval or return?
The girls who tingled, waiting at the slip-rails, quick to hear
The ring of hooves at moonrise through the trees –
Will they waken for a moment from theirn love-sleep with a tear
For the silent hooves that rest across the seas?
Their bones lie glistening on the veldt, their shoes are rusted red,
They are gone where spur and rifle are at rest,
Good dreams to all that legion of the blind, obedient dead!
Good pasture in their islands of the blest!
(M C Keane)
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Based on Topics: Nature Poems, War & Peace Poems, Silver Poems, Idleness PoemsBased on Keywords: veldt, trumpet-call, slip-rails, recking, theirn, tenser, retrieval