Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/42

IN WAR TIME Foul, foul sped the bullet that clipped the white lily,

The flower of our knighthood, the whole army's pride!

Yet we dream that he still,—in that shadowy region

Where the dead form their ranks at the wan drummer's sign,—

Rides on, as of old, down the length of his legion,

And the word still is Forward! along the whole line.

WANTED—A MAN

from the trebly crimsoned field

Terrible words are thunder-tost;

Full of the wrath that will not yield,

Full of revenge for battles lost!

Hark to their echo, as it crost

The Capital, making faces wan:

"End this murderous holocaust;

Abraham Lincoln, give us a !

Born to marshal his fellow-men;

One whose fame is not bought and sold

At the stroke of a politician's pen;

Give us the man of thousands ten,

Fit to do as well as to plan;

Give us a rallying-cry, and then,

Abraham Lincoln, give us a !

And to march and countermarch our brave,

Till they fall like ghosts in the marshes low,

And swamp-grass covers each nameless grave;

Nor another, whose fatal banners wave

Aye in Disaster's shameful van;

Nor another, to bluster, and lie, and rave;—

Abraham Lincoln, give us a !

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