Page:Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, 1846).djvu/123

Rh Could the battle-struggle earn

One kind glance from thine eye,

How this withering heart would burn,

The heady fight to try!

Welcome nights of broken sleep,

And days of carnage cold,

Could I deem that thou wouldst weep

To hear my perils told.

Tell me, if with wandering bands

I roam full far away,

Wilt thou, to those distant lands,

In spirit ever stray?

Wild, long, a trumpet sounds afar;

Bid me—bid me go

Where Seik and Briton meet in war,

On Indian Sutlej's flow.

Blood has dyed the Sutlej's waves

With scarlet stain, I know;

Indus' borders yawn with graves,

Yet, command me go!

Though rank and high the holocaust

Of nations, steams to heaven,

Glad I'd join the death-doomed host,

Were but the mandate given.