Page:An American anthology, 1787-1900; selections illustrating the editor's critical review of American poetry in the nineteenth century (IA anamericananthol00stedrich).pdf/496

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Yet on we go, — the wreck below &emsp;Of many a tumbled wain, — By ghastly pools where stranded mules &emsp;Die, drinking of the rain; With but my list of killed and missed &emsp;I spur my stumbling nag, To tell of death at many a tryst, &emsp;But victory to the flag!

"Halt! who comes there? The countersign!" — &emsp;"A friend." — " Advance! The fight, — How goes it, say?" — "We won the day!" — &emsp;"Huzza! Pass on!" — " Good-night!" — And parts the darkness on before, &emsp;And down the mire we tramp, And the black sky is painted o'er &emsp;With many a pulsing camp; O'er stumps and ruts, by ruined huts, &emsp;Where ghosts look through the gloam, Behind my tread I hear the dead &emsp;Follow the news toward home!

The hunted souls I see behind, &emsp;In swamp and in ravine, Whose cry for mercy thrills the wind &emsp;Till cracks the sure carbine; The moving lights, which scare the dark, &emsp;And show the trampled place Where, in his blood, some mother's bud &emsp;Turns up his young, dead face; The captives spent, whose standards rent &emsp;The conqueror parades, As at the Five Forks roads arrive &emsp;The General's dashing aides.

O wondrous Youth! through this grand ruth &emsp;Runs my boy's life its thread; The General's fame, the battle's name, &emsp;The rolls of maimed and dead I bear, with my thrilled soul astir, &emsp;And lonely thoughts and fears, And am but History's courier &emsp;To bind the conquering years; A battle-ray, through ages gray &emsp;To light to deeds sublime, And flash the lustre of this day &emsp;Down all the aisles of Time!

Ho! pony, — 't is the signal gun &emsp;The night-assault decreed; On Petersburg the thunderbolts &emsp;Crash from the lines of Meade;

Fade the pale, frightened stars o'erhead, &emsp;And shrieks the bursting air; &emsp;The forest foliage, tinted red, Grows ghastlier in the glare; &emsp;Though in her towers, reached her last hours, Rocks proud Rebellion's crest — &emsp;The world may sag, if but my nag Get in before the rest!

With bloody flank, and fetlocks dank, &emsp;And goad, and lash, and shout — Great God! as every hoof-beat falls &emsp;A hundred lives beat out! As weary as this broken steed &emsp;Reels down the corduroys, So, weary, fight for morning light &emsp;Our hot and grimy boys; Through ditches wet, o'er parapet &emsp;And guns barbette, they catch The last, lost breach; and I, — I reach &emsp;The mail with my despatch!

Sure it shall speed, the land to read, &emsp;As sped the happiest shell! The shot I send strike the world's end; &emsp;This tells my pony's knell; His long race run, the long war done, &emsp;My occupation gone, — Above his bier, prone on the pier, &emsp;The vultures fleck the dawn. Still, rest his bones where soldiers dwell, &emsp;Till the Long Roll they catch. He fell the day that Richmond fell, &emsp;And took the first despatch!

IN RAMA face there was, &emsp;When all her pains were done, Beside that face I loved: &emsp;They said it was a son. A son to me — how strange! — &emsp;Who never was a man, But lived from change to change &emsp;A boy, as I began.

More boyish still the hope &emsp;That leaped within me then, That I, matured in him, &emsp;Should found a house of men; And all my wasted sheaves, &emsp;Bound up in his ripe shock, Give seed to sterner times &emsp;And name to sterner stock.