Page:Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War.djvu/106

 They snug their huts with the chapel-pews,

In court-houses stable their steeds—

Kindle their fires with indentures and bonds,

And old Lord Fairfax's parchment deeds;

And Virginian gentlemen's libraries old—

Books which only the scholar heeds—

Are flung to his kennel. It is ravage and range,

And gardens are left to weeds.

Turned adrift into war

Man runs wild on the plain,

Like the jennets let loose

On the Pampas—zebras again.

Like the Pleiads dim, see the tents through the storm—

Aloft by the hill-side hamlet's graves,

On a head-stone used for a hearth-stone there

The water is bubbling for punch for our braves.

What if the night be drear, and the blast

Ghostly shrieks? their rollicking staves

Make frolic the heart; beating time with their swords,

What care they if Winter raves?

''Is life but a dream? and so,''

In the dream do men laugh aloud?