DEATH OF CAPTAIN OATES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 48, 25 February 1913, Page 2

DEATH OF CAPTAIN OATES.

(By Delamore McCoy, in Sydney Sun.) Captain Oates, unable to travel, and unwilling to burden Ids comrades, walked out in the snow to die. Out of the • wide and silent places, where the winding sheet of the snow is spread, There comes a vision of pale, pinched faces, the dumb white ghosts of the frozen dead. —And the bravest souls of the-north-ern races In the icy waste of the South have sped. They fought and fell, with no crowd to cheer; alone, unnoticed, until the end, They faced the fate that was starkly near them, with stiff cold courage no storm could bend. Had they called for help, there was none could hear them, Nor torn hearts answer, nor love befriend. When men died greatly in heat of battle, the maddened medley of shouts and cheers, The scream of shell and the rifles’ rattle had stirred their blood and had stilled their fears; But to seek the death of the snowbound cattle Is rf- deed that lives through the deathless years. With eyes half-blinded wo rend bis story, whoso still face stares to the Polar Vky; His monuments are the icebergs hoary, his requiem is the wild bird’s cry; —And a new page blazed in the Book of Glory When Oates walked out in the snow to die. :