Meredith, George: Chillanwallah

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.