Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/71

ALICE OF MONMOUTH Dash on beneath the smoking dome,

Through level lightnings gallop nearer!

One look to Heaven! No thoughts of home:

The guidons that we bear are dearer.

!

Cling! clang! forward all!

Heaven help those whose horses fall!

Cut left and right!

They flee before our fierce attack!

They fall, they spread in broken surges!

Now, comrades, bear our wounded back,

And leave the foeman to his dirges.

!

The bugles sound the swift recall:

Cling! clang! backward all!

Home, and good night!

XII

1

April rains and the great spring-tide

Cover the lowlands far and wide,

And eastern winds blow somewhat harsh

Over the salt and mildewed marsh,

Then the grasses take deeper root,

Sucking, athirst and resolute;

And when the waters eddy away,

Flowing in trenches to Newark Bay,

The fibrous blades grow rank and tall,

And from their tops the reed-birds call.

Five miles in width the moor is spread;

Two broad rivers its borders thread;

The schooners which up their channels pass

Seem to be sailing in the grass, 41