THE GUARDS CAME THROUGH

SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

Men of the Twenty-first

Up by the Chalk Pit Wood,
Weak with our wounds and our thirst,

Wanting our sleep and our food,

After a day and a night—

God, shall we ever forget!

Beaten and broke in the fight,

But sticking it-sticking it yet.
Trying to hold the line,

Fainting and spent and done,
Always the thud and the whine,
Always the yell of the Hun!
Northumberland, Lancaster, York,
Durham, and Somerset,

Fighting alone, worn to the bone,
But sticking it-sticking it yet.

Never a message of hope!

Never a word of cheer!

Fronting Hill 70's shell-swept slope,

With the dull dead plain in our rear.

Always the whine of the shell,

Always the roar of its burst,

Always the tortures of hell,

As waiting and wincing we cursed.

Our luck and the guns and the Boche,

When our Corporal shouted, "Stand to!"

And I heard someone cry, "Clear the front for the Guards!"
And the Guards came through.

Our throats they were parched and hot,
But Lord, if you'd heard the cheers!
Irish and Welsh and Scot,

Coldstream and Grenadiers.
Two brigades, if you please,
Dressing as straight as a hem,
We-we were down on our knees,
Praying for us and for them!
Lord, I could speak for a week,
But how could you understand!
How should your cheeks be wet,
Such feelin's don't come to you.
But when can we or my mates forget,
When the Guards came through?

"Five yards left extend!"

It passed from rank to rank.
Line after line with never a bend,

And a touch of the London swank.
A trifle of swank and dash,

Cool as a home parade,
Twinkle and glitter and flash,
Flinching never a shade,

With the shrapnel right in their face
Doing their Hyde Park stunt,
Keeping their swing at an easy pace,
Arms at the trail, eyes front!
Man, it was great to see!

Man, it was fine to do!

It's a cot and a hospital ward for me,
But I'll tell 'em in Blighty, wherever I be,
How the Guards came through.

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

Biography. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859--) is an English author. He was educated in Stonyhurst College and at the University of Edinourgh. In 1885 he was graduated as a doctor of medicine and soon afterwards began practice. It was about this time that his first book, A Study in Scarlet, was published. His greatest success came with the publication of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, a collection of detective stories that introduced a character who has become as famous as if he had actually lived. Other books that have added to his fame are The Lost World, The New Revelation, and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. He has written many interesting articles on the World War, particularly descriptions of the western campaigns. In 1902 he was knighted.

Discussion. 1. Who is supposed to be telling the story? 2. Why were the soldiers of the Twenty-first so disheartened? 3. What effect upon them had the arrival of the Guards? 4. Do you think that you would have felt like cheering if you had been a soldier of the Twenty-first? 5. What effect upon you has the line "Dressing as straight as a hem"? 6. What picture does the last stanza give you? 7. Does the poet make you see the Guards as they came through? 8. What do the last three lines suggest? 9. What does "Blighty" mean to you? 10. Why does the one who is telling the story say that we could not understand?

shell-swept slope, 188, 19 waiting and wincing, 188, 24

Phrases

swank and dash, 189, 19
arms at the trail, 189, 26

MY FIRST VIEW OF THE MAELSTROM

We had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some minutes the old man seemed too much exhausted to speak.

"Not long ago," said he at length, "and I could have guided 5 you on this route as well as the youngest of my sons; but, about three years past, there happened to me an event such as never happened before to mortal man-or at least such as no man ever survived to tell of-and the six hours of deadly terror which I then endured have broken me up, body and soul. You suppose 10 me a very old man-but I am not. It took less than a single day

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to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least exertion, and am frightened at a shadow. Do you know I can scarcely look over this little cliff without getting giddy?"

The "little cliff," upon whose edge he had so carelessly thrown himself down to rest that the weightier portion of his body hung over it, while he was only kept from falling by the tenure of his

extreme and slippery edge-this "little cliff" arose, structed precipice of black shining rock, some fifteen undred feet from the world of crags beneath us. ld have tempted me to within half a dozen yards of truth, so deeply was I excited by the perilous posiompanion, that I fell at full length upon the ground, shrubs around me, and dared not even glance upward while I struggled in vain to divest myself of the idea foundations of the mountain were in danger from he winds. It was long before I could reason myself E courage to sit up and look out into the distance. st get over these fancies," said the guide, "for I have here that you might have the best possible view of that event I mentioned—and to tell you the whole e spot just under your eye.

now," he continued, in that particularizing manner uished him-"we are now close upon the Norwegian sixty-eighth degree of latitude-in the great provland-and in the dreary district of Lofoden. The on whose top we sit is Helseggen, the Cloudy. Now E up a little higher-hold on to the grass if you feel nd look out, beyond the belt of vapor beneath us,

dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the apher's account of the Mare Tenebrarum. A panoeplorably desolate no human imagination can con› right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there hed, like ramparts of the world, lines of horridly etling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the illustrated by the surf which reared high up against nd ghastly crest, howling and shrieking forever. Just