And keen as a whip they lash and crack
     Their tails that drag the dust, and back
     Scratch up the earth, and feel, entering their flesh, where he,
     The God, drives deep his trident teeth,
     Who in one horror, above, beneath,
     Bids storm and watery deluge seethe,
     And shatters to their depths the abysses of the sea.

     Cant. iv.

     Poems by George Meredith—­Volume 1

     [This etext was prepared from the 1912 Times Book Club “Surrey
     Edition” by David Price]

     Chillianwallah

     Chillanwallah, Chillanwallah! 
     Where our brothers fought and bled,
     O thy name is natural music
     And a dirge above the dead! 
     Though we have not been defeated,
     Though we can’t be overcome,
     Still, whene’er thou art repeated,
     I would fain that grief were dumb.

     Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah! 
     ’Tis a name so sad and strange,
     Like a breeze through midnight harpstrings
     Ringing many a mournful change;
     But the wildness and the sorrow
     Have a meaning of their own —
     Oh, whereof no glad to-morrow
     Can relieve the dismal tone!

     Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah! 
     ’Tis a village dark and low,
     By the bloody Jhelum river
     Bridged by the foreboding foe;
     And across the wintry water
     He is ready to retreat,
     When the carnage and the slaughter
     Shall have paid for his defeat.

     Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah! 
     ’Tis a wild and dreary plain,
     Strewn with plots of thickest jungle,
     Matted with the gory stain. 
     There the murder-mouthed artillery,
     In the deadly ambuscade,
     Wrought the thunder of its treachery
     On the skeleton brigade.

     Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah! 
     When the night set in with rain,
     Came the savage plundering devils
     To their work among the slain;
     And the wounded and the dying
     In cold blood did share the doom
     Of their comrades round them lying,
     Stiff in the dead skyless gloom.

     Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah! 
     Thou wilt be a doleful chord,
     And a mystic note of mourning
     That will need no chiming word;
     And that heart will leap with anguish
     Who may understand thee best;
     But the hopes of all will languish
     Till thy memory is at rest.

     The doe:  A fragment (From ‘wandering Willie’)

     And—­’Yonder look! yoho! yoho! 
     Nancy is off!’ the farmer cried,
     Advancing by the river side,
     Red-kerchieft and brown-coated;—­’So,
     My girl, who else could leap like that? 
     So neatly! like a lady!  ’Zounds! 
     Look at her how she leads the hounds!’