| |
| AT Quatre Bras, when the fight ran high, | |
| Stout Cameron stood with wakeful eye, | |
| Eager to leap as a mettlesome hound, | |
| Into the fray with a plunge and a bound. | |
| But Wellington, lord of the cool command, | 5 |
| Held the reins with a steady hand, | |
| Saying, “Cameron, wait, you’ll soon have enough, | |
| Give the Frenchmen a taste of your stuff, | |
| When the Cameron men are wanted.” | |
| |
| Now hotter and hotter the battle grew, | 10 |
| With tramp, and rattle, and wild halloo, | |
| And the Frenchmen poured, like a fiery flood, | |
| Right on the ditch where Cameron stood. | |
| Then Wellington flashed from his steadfast stance | |
| On his captain brave a lightning glance, | 15 |
| Saying, “Cameron, now have at them, boy, | |
| Take care of the road to Charleroi, | |
| Where the Cameron men are wanted.” | |
| |
| Brave Cameron shot like a shaft from a bow | |
| Into the midst of the plunging foe, | 20 |
| And with him the lads whom he loved, like a torrent, | |
| Sweeping the rocks in its foamy current; | |
| And he fell the first in the fervid fray, | |
| Where a deathful shot had shove its way, | |
| But his men pushed on where the work was rough | 25 |
| Giving the Frenchmen a taste of their stuff, | |
| Where the Cameron men were wanted. | |
| |
| Brave Cameron then, from the battle’s roar | |
| His foster-brother stoutly bore, | |
| His foster-brother with service true, | 30 |
| Back to the village of Waterloo. | |
| And they laid him on the soft green sod, | |
| And he breathed his spirit there to God, | |
| But not till he heard the loud hurrah | |
| Of victory billowed from Quatre Bras, | 35 |
| Where the Cameron men were wanted. | |
| |
| By the road to Ghent they buried him then, | |
| This noble chief of the Cameron men, | |
| And not an eye was tearless seen | |
| That day beside the alley green: | 40 |
| Wellington wept—the iron man! | |
| And from every eye in the Cameron clan | |
| The big round drop in bitterness fell, | |
| As with the pipes he loved so well | |
| His funeral wail they chanted. | 45 |
| |
| And now he sleeps (for they bore him home, | |
| When the war was done, across the foam). | |
| Beneath the shadow of Nevis Ben, | |
| With his sires, the pride of the Cameron men. | |
| Three thousand Highlandmen stood round, | 50 |
| As they laid him to rest in his native ground; | |
| The Cameron brave, whose eye never quail’d | |
| Whose heart never sank, and whose hand never failed, | |
| Where a Cameron man was wanted. | |
| |
