DEAREST love, do you remember
When we last did meet,
How you told me that you loved me
Kneeling at my feet?
Oh, how proud you stood before me
In your suit of blue,
When you vowed to me and country
Ever to be true.
Chorus.—Weeping, sad and lonely,...
[September 19, 1864]
UP from the South at break of day,
Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay,
The affrighted air with a shudder bore,
Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain’s door,
The terrible grumble and rumble and roar,
Telling the battle was on once more,
And Sheridan twenty miles away.
And wider still those billows of war...
What, was it a dream? am I all alone
In the dreary night and the drizzling rain?
Hist!—ah, it was only the river’s moan;
They have left me behind with the mangled slain.
Yes, now I remember it all too well!
We met, from the battling ranks apart;
Together our weapons flashed and fell,
And mine was sheathed in his quivering heart...
For One Slain in Battle
BREATHE, trumpets, breathe
Slow notes of saddest wailing,—
Sadly responsive peal, ye muffled drums;
Comrades, with downcast eyes
And banners trailing,
Attend him home,—
The youthful warrior comes.
Upon his shield,
Upon his shield returning,
Borne from the field of honor...
Two armies covered hill and plain,
Where Rappahannock’s waters
Ran deeply crimsoned with the stain
Of battle’s recent slaughters.
The summer clouds lay pitched like tents
In meads of heavenly azure;
And each dread gun of the elements
Slept in its embrasure.
The breeze so softly blew, it made
No forest leaf to...
[The last words of Stonewall Jackson 1 were: “Let us cross the river and rest under the shade of the trees.”]
WHAT are the thoughts that are stirring his breast?
What is the mystical vision he sees?
—“Let us pass over the river, and rest
Under the shade of the trees.”
Has he grown sick of his toils and his tasks?
Sighs the worn spirit...
[May 27, 1863]
DARK as the clouds of even,
Ranked in the western heaven,
Waiting the breath that lifts
All the dead mass, and drifts
Tempest and falling brand
Over a ruined land,—
So still and orderly,
Arm to arm, knee to knee,
Waiting the great event,
Stands the black regiment.
Down the long dusty line...
I.—1863
“well, this is bad!” we sighing said,
While musing round the bivouac fire,
And dwelling with a fond desire,
On home and comforts long since fled.
“How gayly came we forth at first!
Our spirits high, with new emprise,
Ambitious of each exercise,
And glowing with a martial thirst.
“Equipped as for a...
[July 3, 1863]
A CLOUD possessed the hollow field,
The gathering battle’s smoky shield,
Athwart the gloom the lightning flashed,
And through the cloud some horsemen dashed,
And from the heights the thunder pealed.
Then at the brief command of Lee
Moved out that matchless infantry,
With Pickett leading grandly down,
To...
[An incident in one of the battles in the Wilderness at the beginning of the campaign of 1864]
DAWN of a pleasant morning in May
Broke through the Wilderness cool and gray;
While perched in the tallest tree-tops, the birds
Were carolling Mendelssohn’s “Songs without Words.”
Far from the haunts of men remote,
The brook brawled on with a...
