Page:Poems that every child should know (ed. Burt, 1904).djvu/107

Rh And wider still those billows of war

Thundered along the horizon's bar;

And louder yet into Winchester rolled

The roar of that red sea uncontrolled,

Making the blood of the listener cold

As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray,

And Sheridan twenty miles away.

But there is a road from Winchester town,

A good, broad highway leading down;

And there, through the flush of the morning light,

A steed as black as the steeds of night

Was seen to pass as with eagle flight;

As if he knew the terrible need,

He stretched away with his utmost speed;

Hills rose and fell; but his heart was gay,

With Sheridan fifteen miles away.

Still sprung from those swift hoofs, thundering South,

The dust, like smoke from the cannon's mouth;

Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster,

Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster.

The heart of the steed and the heart of the master

Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls,

Impatient to be where the battle-field calls;

Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play,

With Sheridan only ten miles away.

Under his spurning feet the road

Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed,

And the landscape sped away behind

Like an ocean flying before the wind,