(A British Officer’s Opinion)

The skies that arched his land were blue,

His bush-born winds were warm and sweet

And yet from earliest hours he knew

The tide of victory and defeat;

From fierce floods thundering at his birth,

From red droughts ravening while he played,

He learned no fear no foe on earth

The bravest thing God ever made!

The bugles of the motherland

Rang ceaselessly across the sea,

 To call him and his lean brown band

To shape imperial destiny.

He went by youth’s grave purpose willed,

The goal unknown, the cost unweighed-

The bravest thing God ever made.

We know- it is our deathless pride

The splendour of his first fierce blow,

How, reckless, glorious, undenied,

 He stormed those steel-lined cliffs we know!

And none who saw him scale those heights

Behind his reeking bayonet blade

Would rob him of his title right-

The bravest thing God ever made.

Bravest, where half a world of men

Are brave beyond all earth’s rewards,

So stoutly none shall charge again

Till the last breaking of the swords;

Wounded or hale, won home from war,

Or yonder by the Lone Pine laid,

Give him his due for evermore-

The bravest thing God ever made!

W.H. Ogilvie