Image courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library
July it was, and the sun’s fierce heat
On road and meadow glistened and beat.
Glistened and beat till the hillside brown
Shrivelled and parched in its angry frown.
Till the dust lay white ‘neath the creaking wain,
And never a zephyr to promise the rain.
Backward from Queenston, backward for aye,
The hostile invaders had passed on their way.
While hot on their rear like a hound on the track,
By the way he retreated brave Riall came back.
By the way he retreated from Chippewa fight,
Outnumbered and beaten that terrible night.
And now where the ground softly slopes from the plain.
And the fragrance of orchards breathes o’er Lundy’s Lane,
At the point where it joins with the old Portage road,
His scanty battalions defiantly stood.
In front lay the foe ; to his challenge they come,
But behind hear the beat of the patriot drum !
For Drummond is marching that pitiless day.
And the feet of his soldiers are swift for the fray.
Undaunted by numbers, by odds undismayed,
“Form the line with the guns in the centre,” he said.
Six o’clock, and the sun as it sunk to its rest.
Like a circle of blood shot its glow from the West.
One instant its gleam on their battle ranks broke ;
The next it was lost in the batteries’ smoke.
And they grappled, they struggled, they fought and they fell,
‘Mid the flash of the bayonet, the hiss of the shell.
One to four ! they are Britons in blood and in bone,
And the land that they fight for they know is their own.
One to four ! shall they perish when wisdom says “Fly?”
On ! Forward like heroes ! for valor says ” Die.”
One to four ! and the twilight in horror shrinks down,
And over the dead casts her mantle of brown.
One to four ! and there fades the last glimmer of light,
And they fought hand to hand for the guns in the night.
And the flashes of flame shot their glare o’er the gloom,
And the cannons re-echoed the cataract’s boom.
And the smoke of their volleys strewn far o’er the plain
Seemed the ghosts of the fallen contending again.
Rose the moon, pallid orbed, her pale course to pursue,
Belated, reluctant, aghast at the view !
So their hands from the slaughter a moment they stay,
A moment they stand statue-like in its ray.
A moment of breathing—a moment—no more,
Then bellowed the cannons their grape as before.
Till the foe, horror-smitten at blood so out-poured,
Withdrew with the bayonet, withdrew with the sword.
So, baffled and vanquished, they sullenly fled,
And night and the victors kept watch with the dead.
Source: George W. Ross (ed.) Patriotic Recitations and Arbor Day Exercises. Toronto : Warwick & Rutter, 1893.
