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Rh And it was terrible: On the right

Raged for hours the heady fight,

Thundered the battery's double bass—

Difficult music for men to face;

While on the left—where now the graves

Undulate like the living waves,

That all that day unceasing swept

Up to the pits the rebels kept—

Round shot ploughed the upland glades,

Sown with bullets, reaped with blades;

Shattered fences here and there

Tossed their splinters in the air;

The very trees were stripped and bare;

The barns that once held yellow grain

Were heaped with harvests of the slain,

The cattle bellowed on the plain,

The turkeys screamed with might and main,

And brooding barn-fowl left their rest

With strange shells bursting in each nest.

Just where the tide of battle turns,

Erect and lonely stood old John Burns.