O flashing muzzles, pause, and let them see
The coming dawn that streaks the sky afar;
Then let your mighty chorus witness be
To them, and Cæsar, that we still make war.
Tell them, O guns, that we have heard their call,
That we have sworn, and will not turn aside,
That we will onward till we win or fall,
That we will keep the faith for which they died.
Bid them be patient, and some day, anon,
They shall feel earth enwrapt in silence deep;
Shall greet, in wonderment, the quiet dawn,
And in content may turn them to their sleep.
His hope has been realised, but he was not to witness its fulfilment; he died of pneumonia on the 28th January 1918, and is buried at Wimereux.
William Hamilton was a South African who, like the Australian Geoffrey Wall, came over to enlist in England. He was a Lecturer in Philosophy at University College, Cape Town, and while training here, in 1916, for the Machine Gun Guards, in which he took a commission, he collected for publication the verses that are bound up in his Modern Poems. A preface dated from Victoria Barracks, Windsor, mentions that most of the poems 'were written in
