Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/224

196 Onward, still on, the agony unheeding!

Onward with failing heart, or courage high!

Onward through heat, and hunger, and dismay,

Turning the starry night to murderous day!

Onward, with hope appalled, once more to strike, and die!

So marched, so fought, so agonized, the hosts;

Battling through forests; rotting where slow crawls

The deathly swamp-stream; and like pallid ghosts

Haunting the hospitals, and loathèd prison-walls.

They knew what freedom was, and right to breathe

Clean air who burrowed from the filth and seethe

Of foulest pens, only that dogs might track,

And to the death-pit drag their living corpses back.

O, would to Heaven some sights could fade from out

Clear memory's all too melancholy page—

Fade and be gone forever! Let the shout

Of victory only linger, and the rage

And glory of battle over land and sea,

And all that noblest is in war's fierce pageantry.

Echoes of deeds immortal, O, awake!

Tremble to language, into music break,

Till lyric memory takes the old emotion,

And leaps from heart to heart the ancient thrill!

Tell of great deeds that yet the wide earth fill:

How first upon the amazèd waves of ocean

The black, infernal, deadly armored-ships

Together rushed, and all the world stood still,

While a new word of war burst from those iron lips;

How up the rivers thundered the strong fleets;

How the great captains 'gainst each other dashed

Gigantic armies. What wild welcome meets

Some well-loved chief who, ere those armies clashed,