OUT east on the sands of distraction that dip to the peep of the sun We waited the coming of action and sighed for the sound of a gun. Before we trekked over the waste in the night to Maghara, and back, We longed for the clatter of haste in the ruck of a mounted attack. We waited the dying of day with impatience and simmering zeal, We watched the red west make away with the sun, and the sombre dusk steal All shadowy-slow and uncertain to huddle the breeze-bartered sands In folds like the folds of a curtain let loose from invisible hands. Like ghosts in the gloaming, ill-fated to march to obscurity's heart, We sprang to the stirrup and waited awhile in the saddle the start. A hush that was heavy and solemn grew tenser than tightening fear, And broke when the head of the column led off with the murmuring rear. Hearse-slow, as the mourners who follow a corpse to the graveyard, we went To gain from the depths of the hollow a point like the peak of a tent. The stars leapt ashine as we travelled wide-eyed in the wilderness white; The moon swung aloft and unravelled a ribbon of pad through the night. Far over the wind-sharpened edges of razor-backed ridges that lift Like pyramid summits and ledges, we surged through the billow-like drift; And discourse was strangely forbidden and hushed by the labouring breath Of animals never yet ridden so far in the silence of death. Like leaders a-tug at the traces, and hitched to a floundering gun, We clambered from hoof-hollowed places where little sand rivulets run; From gorges that muffled the task of each man and his labouring beast, We climbed 'neath the smothering mask of a mist that came out of the east. We halted, unsaddled, and swiftly we hung on the tibbin and corn; Like corpses a-sprawl in the drift we slept fast till the glimmer of morn. We lay in a wind-deepened hollow that gaped with a seeming desire To slowly envelop and swallow the force ere the east leapt afire. We hid till the vivid enamour of eve with its crimson-lit wiles Shed gold in the sweltering glamour, and mellowed the sun-smitten miles; We lay till the camels were crawling all heavily laden and dun Out east, while the shadows were falling to smother the vanishing sun. In serpentine fashion out-stealing the columns writhed hillward to get A glimpse of a low moon revealing high mountains in stark silhouette, When sudden there came without warning a mist like a scumbling pall That covered us as with an awning and hemmed us around with a wall. The sun pierced the mist with a glimmer of lances down-thrust from the sky, And burst in a soul-stirring shimmer that melted the clouds floating high. We climbed from the gloom of a bitter grey waste to a plateau of gold And gazed on its dazzling glitter like travel-worn pilgrims of old. We swept over gravel-strewn spaces, the hoofs crunched the silence to flight, And into white, haggard-worn faces there crept a warm flush of delight; We rode to the lilt of rude measure, when sudden a view of the range Fed hungering eyes like a treasure in magical regions and strange. The horses swept forward! The clatter of galloping hoofs echoed strange, Along with the opening chatter of maxim-guns finding the range. The rifles cracked fitful and ragged, the horses tugged hard on the bit, And sometimes an animal staggered, but seldom a rider was hit. We hurried for safety, for cover—tense-hearted, with never a warp; And bullets strummed under and over like tautly drawn strings of a harp. The Turks, in a wicked endeavour, were sniping with purpose to stem The tide of a race I shall never forget—the Anzacs were swooping on them! Distracted we travelled, worn wretches we crawled through the fog-ridden night, To burst on the green-dotted stretches in waves of unbounded delight. We leapt from a vision-dispelling grey waste to the sunlight of God, Which loses its charm in the telling and dies on the grass-matted sod. We felt the hard turf lying under, in one panting gallop for life— Oh! all to the shattering thunder of guns in a spasm of strife! And high on the crag-shadowed ledges we hurriedly covered the slain; Then back over razor-like edges we trekked through the desert again. |