Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War | Page 9

turned
within the wound
By deadly Hate; where Climes contend
On vasty ground--
No warning Alps or seas between,
And small the
curb of creed or law,
And blood is quick, and quick the brain;
Shall
North and South their rage deplore,
And reunited thrive amain
Like Yorkist and Lancastrian?
Running the Batteries,
As observed from the Anchorage above
Vicksburgh.
(April, 1863.)
A moonless night--a friendly one;
A haze dimmed the shadowy shore

As the first lampless boat slid silent on;
Hist! and we spake no
more;
We but pointed, and stilly, to what we saw.
We felt the dew, and seemed to feel
The secret like a burden laid.

The first boat melts; and a second keel
Is blent with the foliaged
shade--
Their midnight rounds have the rebel officers made?
Unspied as yet. A third--a fourth--
Gun-boat and transport in Indian
file
Upon the war-path, smooth from the North;
But the watch may
they hope to beguile?
The manned river-batteries stretch for mile on
mile.
A flame leaps out; they are seen;
Another and another gun roars;

We tell the course of the boats through the screen
By each further fort
that pours,
And we guess how they jump from their beds on those
shrouded shores.

Converging fires. We speak, though low:
"That blastful furnace can
they thread"
"Why, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego
Came out
all right, we read;
The Lord, be sure, he helps his people, Ned."
How we strain our gaze. On bluffs they shun
A golden growing flame
appears--
Confirms to a silvery steadfast one:
"The town is afire!"
crows Hugh: "three cheers"
Lot stops his mouth: "Nay, lad, better
three tears."
A purposed light; it shows our fleet;
Yet a little late in its searching
ray,
So far and strong, that in phantom cheat
Lank on the deck our
shadows lay;
The shining flag-ship stings their guns to furious play.
How dread to mark her near the glare
And glade of death the beacon
throws
Athwart the racing waters there;
One by one each plainer
grows,
Then speeds a blazoned 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