POETRY.
ABOU HAMED.
Two white stone crosses side by side Mark where the true blood flowed, Where Sydney and Fitzclarence died To win the desert road.
And ringed about them close at hand In trenches not too deep, Unnamed, unnumbered in the sand, Their dead black troopers sleep.
No cypress here, no English yew, No trailing willow waves; On wastes where never green thing grew Lone blanch their outpost graves.
Through scanty fringe of thorn and palm The Nile rolls on hard by, Around them broods the desert calm, Above the desert sky.
The sunrise scares the waning moon And smites the dawn with fire, The still mirage of torrid noon Fades like a vain desire ; Time's wrinkled hand marks no impress Across that desert wide, And changeless there in changelessness Shall those white graves abide.
For they that seek the river's flow From the parched eastern waste, And mark the evening's orange glow, Push on in panic haste; And caravans from north to south That through the desert fare, Choose other spots to quench their drouth When swift night falls—for there, The dark folk tell, when evening dies, A sentry's cry alarms
The graves from which dead soldiers rise That hear the call to arms ;
And till the new sun's level rays Chase night across the sand, On guard around their English beys The dead battalions stand.
World-over thus, good comrades sleep, By alien wilds and waves, Where kindly hands are none to keep And tend the frontier graves ; But here, though not in hallowed ground, Beneath the Afric sky, Inviolately fenced around With love and awe they lie. RENNELL RODD.
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