The Fight At Rorke’s Drift Poem by Emily Pfeiffer

It was over at Isândula, the bloody work was done,
And the yet unburied dead looked up unblinking at the sun;
Eight hundred men of Britain's best had signed with blood the story
Which England leaves to time, and lay there scanted e'en of glory.
Steuart Smith lay smiling by the gun he spiked before he died;
But gallant Gardner lived to write a warning and to ride
A race for England's honour and to cross the Buffalo,
To bid them at Rorke's Drift expect the coming of the foe.
That band of lusty British lads camped in the hostile land
Rose up upon the word with Chard and Bromhead to command;
An hour upon the foe that hardy race had barely won,
But in it all that men could do those British lads had done.
And when the Zulus on the hill appeared, a dusky host,
They found our gallant English boys' ‘pale faces’ at their post;
But paler faces were behind, within the barricade—
The faces of the sick who rose to give their watchers aid.
Five men to one the first dark wave of battle brought, it bore
Down swiftly, while our youngsters waited steadfast as the shore;
Behind the slender barricade, half hidden, on their knees,
They marked the stealthy current glide beneath the orchard-trees.
Then forth the volley blazed, then rose the deadly reek of war;
The dusky ranks were thinned; the chieftain, slain by young Dunbar,
Rolled headlong, and their phalanx broke, but formed as soon as broke,
And with a yell the Furies that avenge man's blood awoke.
The swarthy wave sped on and on, pressed forward by the tide,
Which rose above the bleak hill-top, and swept the bleak hill-side;
It rose upon the hill, and, surging out about its base,
Closed house and barricade within its murderous embrace.
With savage faces girt, the lads' frail fortress seemed to be
An island all abloom within a black and howling sea;
And only that the savages shot wide, and held the noise
As deadly as the bullets, they had overwhelmed the boys.
Then in the dusk of day the dusky Kaffirs crept about
The bushes and the prairie-grass, to rise up with a shout,
To step, as in a war-dance, all together, and to fling
Their weight against the sick-house till they made its timbers spring.
When beaten back, they struck their shields, and thought to strike with fear
Those British hearts,—their answer came, a ringing British cheer!
And the volley we sent after showed the Kaffirs to their cost
The coolness of our temper,—scarce an ounce of shot was lost.
And the sick men from their vantage at the windows singled out
From among the valiant savages the bravest of the rout;
A pile of fourteen warriors lay dead upon the ground
By the hand of Joseph Williams, and there led up to the mound
A path of Zulu bodies on the Welshman's line of fire,
Ere he perished, dragged out, assegaied, and trampled in their ire;
But the body takes its honour or dishonour from the soul,
And his name is writ in fire upon our nation's long bead-roll.
Yet, let no name of any name be set above the rest,
Where all were braver than the brave, each better than the best,
Where the sick rose up as heroes, and the sound had hearts for those
Who, in madness of their fever, were contending as with foes.
For the hospital was blazing, roof and wall, and in its light
The Kaffirs showed like devils, till so deadly grew the fight
That they cowered into cover, and one moment all was still,
When a Kaffir chieftain bellowed forth new orders from the hill.
Then the Zulu warriors rallied, formed again, and hand to hand
We fought above the barricade; determined was the stand;
Our fellows backed each other up,—no wavering and no haste,
But loading in the Kaffir's teeth, and not a shot to waste.
We had held on through the dusk, and we had held on in the light
Of the burning house, and later, in the dimness of the night;
They could see our fairer faces; we could find them by their cries,
By the flash of savage weapons and the glare of savage eyes.
With the midnight came a change—that angry sea at length was cowed,
Its waves still broke upon us, but fell fainter and less loud;
When the ‘pale face’ of the dawn rose glimmering from his bed
The last black sullen wave swept off and bore away the dead.
That island all abloom with English youth, and fortified
With English valour, stood above the wild, retreating tide;
Those lads contemned Canute, and shamed the lesson that he read,—
For them the hungry waves withdrew, the howling ocean fled.
Britannia, rule Britannia! while thy sons resemble thee,
And are islanders, true islanders, wherever they may be;
Islands fortified like this, manned with islanders like these,
Will keep thee Lady of thy Land, and Sovereign of all Seas.