The Drummer's Death-Roll Poem by John Critchley Prince

To a region of song and of sunnier day,
The battle-host wended its wearisome way,
Through the terrible Splugen's tenebrious gloom,
That seemed to lead on to the portals of doom.
But the Alp-spirit struggled to break and to bar
The resolute march of those minions of war;
For the savage winds howled through the gorges of
stone;
And the pine forest muttered a menace and moan;
And the rush of the hurricane caused them to reel;
And the frost-breezes smote them like sabres of steel;
And the torrents incessantly thundered and hissed;
And the scream of the eagle came harsh through the
mist;
And the avalanche stirred with a deep, muffled roar,
Like the boom of the sea on a desolate shore,
Till it leapt from its throne with a flash, and a speed
That hurled to destruction both rider and steed;
And Love could not hope, by the strongest endeavour,
To weep on the spot where they slumber for ever!

A drummer went down with the burden of snow,
But struggled, and lived, 'mid the buried below,
Survived for a brief, but how awful a space!
In the granite-bound depth of that horrible place.
He looked from the jaws of that rock-riven grave,
And called on the Mother of Jesus to save;
But Heaven seemed deaf to his piteous wail,
And men could not hear his sad voice on the gale;
And, alas! human help could not come to him there,
Nor the breezes waft home the farewell of his prayer.
But still he clung closely to hope and to life,
And waged with disaster a desperate strife,—
A conflict which midnight might solemnly close,
And leave him the peace of a lasting repose.

A sudden thought thrilled through his wandering brain,
His drum lay beside him, he smote it amain,
And brought from its hollow a vigorous sound,
That wakened the wild mountain echoes around,
And startled the vulture that circled away,
But returned to his vigil, impatient for prey.
Roll, roll went the drum till the sunset was passed,
And scattered its tones on the hurrying blast,
While his friends, far away on their Alpine career,
Caught the dolorous sound with a sorrowful ear;
For they knew that a comrade was hopelessly lost,
Left alone to the tortures of hunger and frost,
Cut off from the reach of humanity there,
And beating his drum with the strength of despair!

But who can imagine his quick-coming fears,
His visions, his agonies, yearnings, and tears,
When paralysed, spent, and benumbed to the bone,
He sank on his snow-bed to perish alone?
What fancy can bring back the pictures that passed
O'er the brain of the desolate lost one at last,
Ere death came to still the last pulse in his breast,
And stretch out his limbs in a petrified rest?

Perchance his bright childhood came back to his thought,
And his youth, when his heart in love's meshes was caught,
And his village, embowered in a vine-covered vale,
With peace in its aspect, and health in its gale;
The blithe peasant maiden he learned to adore,
And his home which his shadow would darken no more,
That home where his parents and kindred were gay,
In the hope of his coming at no distant day,
That meeting which never would gladden their eyes,
Save in the blest climate of holier skies.

Whate'er his last hope, aspiration, and prayer,
Untended, he died in his loneliness there,
In a place of sublimities, horrors, and storms,
Surrounded by Nature's most terrible forms,
Where the voices of avalanche, wild wind and wave,
Sang a varying dirge o'er his rock-riven grave.
Let us hope that his soul, in the hour of its gloom,
By its faith cast aside all the terrors of doom,
Left the desolate dust to commix with the clod,
And awakened with joy in the regions of God!