Explore "With French to Kimberley" by Andrew Barton Paterson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The Boers were down on Kimberley with siege and Maxim gun; / The Boers were down on Kimberley, their numbers ten to one! / Faint were the hopes the British had to make the struggle good, / Defenceless in an open plain the Diamond City stood. / They built them forts from bags of sand, they fought from roof and wall, / They flashed a message to the south 'Help! or the town must fall!' / And down our ranks the order ran to march at dawn of day, / For French was off to Kimberley to drive the Boers away.
He made no march along the line; he made no front attack / Upon those Magersfontein heights that drove the Scotchmen back; / But eastward over pathless plains by open veldt and vley, / Across the front of Cronje's force his troopers held their way. / The springbuck, feeding on the flats where Modder River runs, / Were startled by his horses' hoofs, the rumble of his guns. / The Dutchman's spies that watched his march from every rocky wall / Rode back in haste: 'He marches east! He threatens Jacobsdal!' / Then north he wheeled as wheels the hawk and showed to their dismay, / That French was off to Kimberley to drive the Boers away.