Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/79

ALICE OF MONMOUTH 4

The air above seemed heavy with errant souls,

Dense with ghosts from those gory forms arisen,—

Each rudely driven from its prison,

'Mid the harsh jar of rattling musket-rolls,

And quivering throes, and unexpected force;

In helpless waves adrift confusedly,

Freighting the sombre haze without resource.

Through all there trickled, from the pitying sky,

An infinite mist of tears upon the ground,

Muffling the groans of anguish with its sound.

5

On the borders of such a land, on the bounds of Death,

The stranger, shuddering, moved as one who saith:

And onward, struggling with his pain,

Traversed the endless camp-fires, spark by spark,

Past sentinels that challenged from the dark,

Guided through camp and camp to one long tent

Whose ridge a flying bolt from the field had rent

Letting the midnight mist, the battle din,

Fall on the hundred forms that writhed within.

6

Beyond the gaunt Zouave at the nearest cot,

And the bugler shot in the arm, who lay beside

(Looking down at the wounded spot

Even then, for all the pain, with boyish pride),

And a score of men, with blankets opened wide,

Showing the gory bandages which bound

The paths of many a deadly wound,

—Over all these the stranger's glances sped

To one low stretcher, at whose head

A woman, bowed and brooding, sate,

As sit the angels of our fate, 49