POETRY.

A CHITRAL INCIDENT.

[While engineers were throwing a bridge made of telegraph-wire over the river Panjkora, Major Aylmer, V.C., slid down a slack wire and snatched from death a soldier who was being whirled into the rapids below.]

"LET them toil!" said I, laughing in shallows Gold-flecked with the gleam of the sand, Blue shot with the glint of my mirror Wide spreading from strand to strand.

So I suffered a bridge o'er my river,

My placid and still-running river, Till I held them ensnared in my hand.

The sun sank low on their toilings, And red on my bosom he burned, And the azure and gold of my wavelets To steel and blood-colour I turned. But they in the pride of their labours, Their impious, wasted labours, The warning all heedlessly. spurned.

In the stillness I whispered : "Ye mountains,

Now lend me the might of your snow, With the charge of your icy battalions We will shatter their works at a blow; They shall find for their grand boat-bridges, Their insolent floating bridges, - But a handful of splinters to show."

So I spoke, so 'two done ; with the sunrise Triumphant in spate I rushed by Where they gazed at the wreck of their labours, And challenged them there to deny That we mountains and rivers are masters, Eternally sovrans and masters, Whose word it is vain to defy.

From the shade of the great Himalayas To the sun-smitten capes of Ceylon The fakir and ryot confess it, And lay their poor gifts at our throne. And so should they learn, those invaders, Those greedy and grasping invaders, The dues of their homage to own.

They left me to sport with the remnants As a tiger might play in its lair, And they granted the might of my waters, Yet refused to bow down in despair ; But with wires that they use to flash secrete, Far-distant and swift-flying secrets, They hung them a bridge in the air

Where they marked how I narrowed my channel

To cleave through the rocks as a knife, And they cast o'er my torrent a girdle, And challenged renewal of strife.

Then I said : "Of a truth ye are foemen Full worthy to meet me, yet foemen Must for victory pay with a life."

In a while from above, by the wreckage, On a raft sped a white man adrift. .

" Lo !" said I, "the fair sacrifice comethi

And his fate shall be cruel and swift ; He shall read his own death in their faces, In the gaze of their grief-stricken faces, When the bridge o'er my rapids they lift." Fast, faster, he came to his ending, Nor dared he to stir or to scream ; Clinging mute to the wavering Umbel., And enwrapt in a hideous dream, As he stared at my myriad eddies, A swirl of bewildering eddies, The close-prying eyes of my stream.

All the infidel workers bent watching Spell-bound, and not one could essay Save their leader—in thought and in action A master—to stand in my way.

Him I summoned : "Accursed Feringhee, Accursed yet noble Feringhee, I challenge thee, fight for the prey."

Undaunted he answered the challenge, And swung himself down by a wire, Though it sank him neck-deep in my whirlpools And burnt through his fingers as fire.

And he caught at the prey in my clutches, My hungry and ravening clutches, For the twain were my heart's desire!

And the lust of the sacrifice stirred me To whelm them so deep with my tide, That exultingly sure of the triumph, "Mine, mine, ye are mine now," I cried, Too soon the fair victory claiming, Too fondly the victory claiming; —For the infidel trod on my pride!

Though I hurled all the depths of my waters, Though I blinded and lashed him with spray, Yet I broke not the strength of his hand-grip, Yet I tore not my victim away.

Then I hissed in my hate to the mountains : "Descend now and crush them, 0 mountains : Oh, see me not baulked of the prey !"

But the mountains made answer : "These white men Will yield us nor homage nor fee; We have spied from our far-viewing summits How they girdle the earth and the sea.

In vain then, 0 river, thy ravings, Thy useless and impotent raving; They will cast their steel girdle o'er thee!"

FREDERICK SYDNEY.