Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War | Page 9

target to our gladdened foes.
The impartial cresset lights as well?The fixed forts to the boats that run;?And, plunged from the ports, their answers swell?Back to each fortress dun:?Ponderous words speaks every monster gun.
Fearless they flash through gates of flame,?The salamanders hard to hit,?Though vivid shows each bulky frame;?And never the batteries intermit,?Nor the boats huge guns; they fire and flit.
Anon a lull. The beacon dies:?"Are they out of that strait accurst"?But other flames now dawning rise,?Not mellowly brilliant like the first,?But rolled in smoke, whose whitish volumes burst.
A baleful brand, a hurrying torch?Whereby anew the boats are seen--?A burning transport all alurch!?Breathless we gaze; yet still we glean?Glimpses of beauty as we eager lean.
The effulgence takes an amber glow?Which bathes the hill-side villas far;?Affrighted ladies mark the show?Painting the pale magnolia--?The fair, false, Circe light of cruel War.
The barge drifts doomed, a plague-struck one.?Shoreward in yawls the sailors fly.?But the gauntlet now is nearly run,?The spleenful forts by fits reply,?And the burning boat dies down in morning's sky.
All out of range. Adieu, Messieurs!?Jeers, as it speeds, our parting gun.?So burst we through their barriers?And menaces every one:?So Porter proves himself a brave man's son.[7]
Stonewall Jackson.?Mortally wounded at Chancellorsville.?(May, 1863.)
The Man who fiercest charged in fight,?Whose sword and prayer were long--
Stonewall!?Even him who stoutly stood for Wrong,?How can we praise? Yet coming days?Shall not forget him with this song.
Dead is the Man whose Cause is dead,?Vainly he died and set his seal--
Stonewall!?Earnest in error, as we feel;?True to the thing he deemed was due,?True as John Brown or steel.
Relentlessly he routed us;?But _we_ relent, for he is low--
Stonewall!?Justly his fame we outlaw; so?We drop a tear on the bold Virginian's bier,?Because no wreath we owe.
Stonewall Jackson.?(Ascribed to a Virginian.)
One man we claim of wrought renown?Which not the North shall care to slur;?A Modern lived who sleeps in death,?Calm as the marble Ancients are:?'Tis he whose life, though a vapor's wreath,?Was charged with the lightning's burning breath--?Stonewall, stormer of the war.
But who shall hymn the roman heart??A stoic he, but even more:?The iron will and lion thew?Were strong to inflict as to endure:?Who like him could stand, or pursue??His fate the fatalist followed through;?In all his great soul found to do?Stonewall followed his star.
He followed his star on the Romney march?Through the sleet to the wintry war;?And he followed it on when he bowed the grain--?The Wind of the Shenandoah;?At Gaines's Mill in the giant's strain--?On the fierce forced stride to Manassas-plain,?Where his sword with thunder was clothed again,?Stonewall followed his star.
His star he followed athwart the flood?To Potomac's Northern shore,?When midway wading, his host of braves?"_My Maryland!_" loud did roar--?To red Antietam's field of graves,?Through mountain-passes, woods and waves,?They followed their pagod with hymns and glaives,?For Stonewall followed a star.
Back it led him to Marye's slope,?Where the shock and the fame he bore;?And to green Moss-Neck it guided him--?Brief respite from throes of war:?To the laurel glade by the Wilderness grim,?Through climaxed victory naught shall dim,?Even unto death it piloted him--?Stonewall followed his star.
Its lead he followed in gentle ways?Which never the valiant mar;?A cap we sent him, bestarred, to replace?The sun-scorched helm of war:?A fillet he made of the shining lace?Childhood's laughing brow to grace--?Not his was a goldsmith's star.
O, much of doubt in after days?Shall cling, as now, to the war;?Of the right and the wrong they'll still debate,?Puzzled by Stonewall's star:?"Fortune went with the North elate"?"Ay, but the south had Stonewall's weight,?And he fell in the South's vain war."
Gettysburg.?The Check.?(July, 1863.)
O pride of the days in prime of the months?Now trebled in great renown,?When before the ark of our holy cause
Fell Dagon down--?Dagon foredoomed, who, armed and targed,?Never his impious heart enlarged?Beyond that hour; god walled his power,?And there the last invader charged.
He charged, and in that charge condensed?His all of hate and all of fire;?He sought to blast us in his scorn,
And wither us in his ire.?Before him went the shriek of shells--?Aerial screamings, taunts and yells;?Then the three waves in flashed advance?Surged, but were met, and back they set:?Pride was repelled by sterner pride,?And Right is a strong-hold yet.
Before our lines it seemed a beach?Which wild September gales have strown?With havoc on wreck, and dashed therewith
Pale crews unknown--?Men, arms, and steeds. The evening sun?Died on the face of each lifeless one,?And died along the winding marge of fight
And searching-parties lone.
Sloped on the hill the mounds were green,?Our center held that place of graves,?And some still hold it in their swoon,?And over these a glory waves.?The warrior-monument, crashed in fight,[8]?Shall soar transfigured in loftier light,
A meaning ampler bear;?Soldier and priest with hymn and prayer?Have laid the stone, and every bone
Shall rest in honor there.
The House-top.?A Night Piece.?(July, 1863.)
No sleep. The sultriness pervades the air?And binds the brain--a dense oppression, such?As tawny tigers feel in matted shades,?Vexing their