Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/92

IN WAR TIME Of cruel retreats through pent-up streets by murderous volleys swept,—

How well the Stone, the Iron, Brigades their bloody outposts kept:

'T was for the Union, for the Flag, they perished, heroes all,

And we swore to conquer in the end, or even like them to fall.

And passed from mouth to mouth the tale of that grim day just done,

The fight by Round Top's craggy spur,—of all the deadliest one;

It saved the left: but on the right they pressed us back too well,

And like a field in Spring the ground was ploughed with shot and shell.

There was the ancient graveyard, its hummocks crushed and red,

And there, between them, side by side, the wounded and the dead:

The mangled corpses fallen above,—the peaceful dead below,

Laid in their graves, to slumber here, a score of years ago;

It seemed their waking, wandering shades were asking of our slain,

What brought such hideous tumult now where they so still had lain!

Bright rose the sun of Gettysburg that morrow morningtide,

And call of trump and roll of drum from height to height replied.

Hark! from the east already goes up the rattling din;

The Twelfth Corps, winning back their ground, right well the day begin! 62