LIE Ul..EINANT ROBERTS' CHARGER AT OMENS°.
Chleveley, Friday, December 13th.
Lieutenant Roberts, son of Lord Roberts, was shot about 8.30 a.m. We saw him fall from his horse. Toe noble brute never shifted from his master's side, though the Boers played their porn-porn on him on several occasions. An officer of the Staff afterwards managed to get this horse away."—Prom the Diary of Corporal Waliam Hunter, 2nd Batt. Royal Scots Fusiliers; published in the "Scotsman" for Wednesday, September 12th. 191St)
"Poet bellator equus, positis insignibus, Sotto% It bscrimans, guttisque humectat grandibus ore."
THERE, where he dropped, riding to save the gun, He lay, a faint, still, hardly-breathing cone, A hero, the great hero's only son; Beside him stood his horse: Who would not leave his master, though to leave All hearts were fain, and all who left not fell, For still the eager foe gave no reprieve From bullet and from shell.
"We saw him stand," they tell, "the noble brute, Silently loyal to the sunken head."
All, how more eloquent that service mute Than aught that tongue had said !
Yet haply had some all-compelling Power Given sudden speech, as in the world's first morn, What witness in that agonising hour Had the dumb nature borne !
"Men live and struggle for a hundred pleas, For God, for country, for ambitions high ; We blindly share man's labour and his ease, And when he bids, we die.
"Yet often is our life as truly given, And given as gladly for a worthy cause, As his, and though we cannot read in Heaven The purport of earth's laws, "We love the highest in our humbler ken; We worship and obey the best we know ; As gods and devils, unto brutes are men, Angels of joy and woe ; "And he that has the skill to be our friend, Winning our heart, we have no loftier name, Unquestioning we serve him to the end, To flinch were ache and shame."
So when of old the Trojan chivalry Followed their boy-knight's bier in sad array, His steed, the big drops in his wistful eye, Went, mourning even as they.
Kind to thy beasts, firm-willed, but gentle chief, Scant room and time for tender thoughts are thine, Yet that his charger shared thy love and grief, Be this too anodyne ! THETA.
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