Complete Poetical Works | Page 5

terrible. On the right
Raged for hours the heady fight,

Thundered the battery's double bass,--
Difficult music for men to face

While on the left--where now the graves
Undulate like the living
waves
That all that day unceasing swept
Up to the pits the rebels
kept--
Round shot ploughed the upland glades,
Sown with bullets,
reaped with blades;
Shattered fences here and there
Tossed their
splinters in the air;
The very trees were stripped and bare;
The barns
that once held yellow grain
Were heaped with harvests of the slain;

The cattle bellowed on the plain,
The turkeys screamed with might
and main,
And brooding barn-fowl left their rest
With strange shells
bursting in each nest.
Just where the tide of battle turns,
Erect and lonely stood old John
Burns.
How do you think the man was dressed?
He wore an ancient
long buff vest,
Yellow as saffron,--but his best;
And buttoned over
his manly breast
Was a bright blue coat, with a rolling collar,
And
large gilt buttons,--size of a dollar,--
With tails that the country-folk
called "swaller."
He wore a broad-brimmed, bell-crowned hat,

White as the locks on which it sat.
Never had such a sight been seen

For forty years on the village green,
Since old John Burns was a
country beau,
And went to the "quiltings" long ago.
Close at his elbows all that day,
Veterans of the Peninsula,

Sunburnt and bearded, charged away;
And striplings, downy of lip
and chin,--
Clerks that the Home Guard mustered in,--
Glanced, as
they passed, at the hat he wore,
Then at the rifle his right hand bore,

And hailed him, from out their youthful lore,
With scraps of a
slangy repertoire:
"How are you, White Hat?" "Put her through!"


"Your head's level!" and "Bully for you!"
Called him
"Daddy,"--begged he'd disclose
The name of the tailor who made his
clothes,
And what was the value he set on those;
While Burns,
unmindful of jeer and scoff,
Stood there picking the rebels off,--

With his long brown rifle and bell-crown hat,
And the swallow-tails

they were laughing at.
'Twas but a moment, for that respect
Which clothes all courage their
voices checked;
And something the wildest could understand
Spake
in the old man's strong right hand,
And his corded throat, and the
lurking frown
Of his eyebrows under his old bell-crown;
Until, as
they gazed, there crept an awe
Through the ranks in whispers, and
some men saw,
In the antique vestments and long white hair,
The
Past of the Nation in battle there;
And some of the soldiers since
declare
That the gleam of his old white hat afar,
Like the crested
plume of the brave Navarre,
That day was their oriflamme of war.
So raged the battle. You know the rest:
How the rebels, beaten and
backward pressed,
Broke at the final charge and ran.
At which John
Burns--a practical man--
Shouldered his rifle, unbent his brows,

And then went back to his bees and cows.
That is the story of old John Burns;
This is the moral the reader learns:

In fighting the battle, the question's whether
You'll show a hat
that's white, or a feather!
"HOW ARE YOU, SANITARY?"
Down the picket-guarded lane
Rolled the comfort-laden wain,

Cheered by shouts that shook the plain,
Soldier-like and merry:
Phrases such as camps may teach,

Sabre-cuts of Saxon speech,
Such as "Bully!" "Them's the peach!"
"Wade in, Sanitary!"
Right and left the caissons drew
As the car went lumbering through,

Quick succeeding in review
Squadrons military;
Sunburnt men with beards like frieze,

Smooth-faced boys, and cries like these,--
"U. S. San. Com." "That's

the cheese!"
"Pass in, Sanitary!"
In such cheer it struggled on
Till the battle front was won:
Then the
car, its journey done,
Lo! was stationary;
And where bullets whistling fly
Came the
sadder, fainter cry,
"Help us, brothers, ere we die,--
Save us, Sanitary!"
Such the work. The phantom flies,
Wrapped in battle clouds that rise:

But the brave--whose dying eyes,
Veiled and visionary,
See the jasper gates swung wide,
See the
parted throng outside--
Hears the voice to those who ride:
"Pass in, Sanitary!"
BATTLE BUNNY
(MALVERN HILL, 1864)
"After the men were ordered to lie down, a white rabbit, which had
been hopping hither and thither over the field swept by grape and
musketry, took refuge among the skirmishers, in the breast of a
corporal."--Report of the Battle of Malvern Hill.
Bunny, lying in the grass,
Saw the shining column pass;
Saw the
starry banner fly,
Saw the chargers fret and fume,
Saw the flapping
hat and plume,--
Saw them with his moist and shy
Most
unspeculative eye,
Thinking only, in the dew,
That it was a fine
review.
Till a flash, not all of steel,
Where the rolling caissons wheel,

Brought a rumble and a roar
Rolling down that velvet floor,
And

like blows of autumn flail
Sharply threshed the iron hail.
Bunny, thrilled by unknown fears,
Raised his soft and pointed ears,

Mumbled his prehensile lip,
Quivered his pulsating hip,
As the
sharp vindictive yell
Rose above the screaming shell;
Thought the
world and all its men,--
All the charging squadrons meant,--
All
were rabbit-hunters then,
All to capture him intent.
Bunny was not
much to blame:
Wiser folk have thought the same,--
Wiser folk
who think they spy
Every ill begins with "I."
Wildly panting here and there,
Bunny sought the freer air,
Till he
hopped below the hill,
And saw, lying close and still,
Men with
muskets in their hands.
(Never