VARIOUS VERSE.

Evening Post, Volume LIX, Issue 11, 13 January 1900, Page 4 (Supplement)

VARIOUS VERSE.

TWO HUNDRED TROOPERS MORE, j " Unwarned by precedent, ' uninfluenced by example, the Boer nation has sailed for war, and, by Heavens, Sirs, they shall have it with a vengeance." — (Paraphrase of Lord Dalhousie.) The steam's up in the boilers, and the sinoko is rolling dark From the stacks of all the steamers on the tide; And they're here in quarter-columnl on the hob and dusty Park, Dressing stiffly to the markers and the guide. ' Perhaps they are not needed, but to show just how they felt Por the noble dead now lying on the .bullet-bitten veldt, They have mustered from tho backwoods — they have gathered from the shore — And they're coming, Mr. Chamberlain, two hundred troopers more. They are coming, Meister Kruger — marching kits at fifty pounds — Just to settle up outstanding bills witb you; And the bandoliers are bulky with the regulation rounds, For the boys are going off to see it through. Men who've led their charging forwards, pressing hotly to the Sront — Men who've ridden stiffish country in lire melee of the hunt — Men whose rifles at the ranges shoved the way with rattling score — They axe coming to Pretoria, two hundred troopers more. See, the column's swinging forwardthough our eyes are mostly dry, Yet the feeling at the heart is pretty keen — And the leading files are wheeling, so we wave a last good-bye While the bands are playing "Soldiers of the Queen." And it's only times like these that put our feelings to the test, For we're 'absent-minded beggars' just like Tommy and the rest ; But should league of hostile nations ever press the Empire sore, We'll be ready, Mother England, with a hundred thousand more. —A. Spence, Dunedin. [Dedicated to the officers and men of the Second New Zealand Contingent and ' especially to my old comrades Donald M'Donald and Samuel Ballantyne, with the heartfelt wish that they may be spared to come back to us, and the confident hope that, like Major Kobin's splendid command, they will one and all acquit themselves in a mannea" worthy of the "best traditions of "the thin red line."]