Chapter IV

The way of it? Our picket was ridin’ in be the wall of the little white town,
That’s stuck like a blaiched wasps’ nest in the gap where the ridge of the hills breaks down,
And the big flat plain spreads out and about, you might say ’twas a bog gone dhry,
Lookin’ nathural enough till you notice, pricked up ’gin the light in the sky,
Their two thin towers, like an ould snail’s horns be the shell of their haythin dome,
Peerin’ out of a purpose to put you in mind where you’ve thravelled from home.
We were ridin’ too close; I remember along on the white of the wall
The front men’s helmets went bob, bob, bob, in blue shadow, sthretched won’erful tall,
For the sunbames were raichin’ their furthest aslant from the edge of the day,
Where the light ran, dhrained over the earth, like a wave turnin’ back to the say,
All hot gold. Howane’er, when we past where their straight-archin’ door opened black,
Wid the dust-thracks they thramp into roads glamin’ in at it, off went a crack,
And ere ever an echo got rappin’ the hills, or the smoke riz to float,
’Twas a plunge, and a thud, and Jack Connolly down wid him, shot in the throat.