Classic Poem

Who's for the Gathering, who's for the Fair?
The bravest of the brave are at deadlock there,
There are bullets by the hundred buzzing in the air;
There are bonny lads lying on the hillside bare;
But the Gordons know what the Gordons dare
When they hear the pipers playing!

The happiest English heart to-day
In the heart of the Colonel, hide it as he may
He sees his work and he sees the way,
He knows his time and the word to say,
And he's thinking of the tune that the Gordons play
When he sets the pipers playing!

Rising, roaring, rushing like the tide,
They're up through the fire-zone, not to be denied;
Thirty bullets straight where the rest went wide,
And thirty lads are lying on the bare hillside;
But they passed in the hour of the Gordons' pride,
To the skirl of the pipers' playing.