New Zealand Verse/The Blind, Obedient Dead

XLIV.

The Blind, Obedient Dead.

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 combat, recking nothing if they won
When the echoes of the last shot died away;
They are dreaming of the far-off bush and creeks, and shade and sun,
And the gallops at the breaking of the day.

Did they wonder at the trumpet-call that urged 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 our horses in their long sleep where we sent them out to die,
To an exile past retrieval and return?

The girls who tingled, waiting at the slip-rails, quick to hear
The ring of hoofs at moonrise through the trees—
Will they waken for a moment from their love-sleep, with a tear
For the silent hoofs at rest across the seas?

Their bones are 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.