Dreams and Days: Poems Part 18

Faltered the column, spent with shot and sword; Its bright hope blanched with sudden pallor; While Hanc.o.c.k's trefoil bloomed in triple fame.

He chose the field; he saved the second day; And, honoring here his glorious name, Again his phalanx held victorious sway.

Meade's line stood firm, and volley on volley roared Triumphant Union, soon to be restored, Strong to defy all foes and fears forever.

The Ridge was wreathed with angry fire As flames rise round a martyr's stake; For many a hero on that pyre Was offered for our dear land's sake, What time in heaven the gray clouds flew To mingle with the deathless blue; While here, below, the blue and gray Melted minglingly away, Mirroring heaven, to make another day.

And we, who are Americans, we pray The splendor of strength that Gettysburg knew May light the long generations with glorious ray, And keep us undyingly true!

X

Dear are the dead we weep for; Dear are the strong hearts broken!

Proudly their memory we keep for Our help and hope; a token Of sacred thought too deep for Words that leave it unspoken.

All that we know of fairest, All that we have of meetest, Here we lay down for the rarest Doers whose souls rose fleetest And in their homes of air rest, Ranked with the truest and sweetest.

Days, with fiery-hearted, bold advances; Nights in dim and shadowy, swift retreat; Rains that rush with bright, embattled lances; Thunder, booming round your stirless feet;-- Winds that set the orchard with sweet fancies All abloom, or ripple the ripening wheat; Moonlight, starlight, on your mute graves falling; Dew, distilled as tears unbidden flow;-- Dust of drought in drifts and layers crawling; Lulling dreams of softly whispering snow; Happy birds, from leafy coverts calling;-- These go on, yet none of these you know: Hearing not our human voices Speaking to you all in vain, Nor the psalm of a land that rejoices, Ringing from churches and cities and foundries a mighty refrain!

But we, and the sun and the birds, and the breezes that blow When tempests are striving and lightnings of heaven are spent, With one consent Make unto them Who died for us eternal requiem.

XI

Lovely to look on, O South, No longer stately-scornful But beautiful still in pride, Our hearts go out to you as toward a bride!

Garmented soft in white, Haughty, and yet how love-imbuing and tender!

You stand before us with your gently mournful Memory-haunted eyes and flower-like mouth, Where clinging thoughts--as bees a-cl.u.s.ter Murmur through the leafy gloom, Musical in monotone-- Whisper sadly. Yet a l.u.s.tre As of glowing gold-gray light s.h.i.+nes upon the orient bloom, Sweet with orange-blossoms, thrown Round the jasmine-starred, deep night Crowning with dark hair your brow.

Ruthless, once, we came to slay, And you met us then with hate.

Rough was the wooing of war: we won you, Won you at last, though late!

Dear South, to-day, As our country's altar made us One forever, so we vow Unto yours our love to render: Strength with strength we here endow, And we make your honor ours.

Happiness and hope shall sun you: All the wiles that half betrayed us Vanish from us like spent showers.

XII

Two hostile bullets in mid-air Together shocked, And swift were locked Forever in a firm embrace.

Then let us men have so much grace To take the bullets' place, And learn that we are held By laws that weld Our hearts together!

As once we battled hand to hand, So hand in hand to-day we stand, Sworn to each other, Brother and brother, In storm and mist, or calm, translucent weather: And Gettysburg's guns, with their death-giving roar, Echoed from ocean to ocean, shall pour Quickening life to the nation's core; Filling our minds again With the spirit of those who wrought in the Field of the Flower of Men!

NOTES

[1] _Bride Brook_.--The colony of New London (now part of Connecticut) was founded by John Winthrop, Jr., under the jurisdiction of Ma.s.sachusetts. One of the boundary lines was a stream flowing into Long Island Sound, between the present city of New London and the Connecticut River. In the snowy winter of 1646, Jonathan Rudd, who dwelt in the settlement of Saybrook Fort, at the mouth of the Connecticut, sent for Winthrop to celebrate a marriage between himself and a certain "Mary" of Saybrook, whose last name has been lost. Winthrop performed the ceremony on the frozen surface of the streamlet, the farthest limit of his magistracy; and thereupon bestowed the name "Bride Brook," which it still bears.

[2] _The Bride of War_.--Jemima Warner, a Pennsylvania woman, was the wife of one of Morgan's riflemen. She marched with the expedition; and, when her husband perished of cold and exhaustion, she took his rifle and equipments and herself carried them to Quebec, where she delivered them to Arnold as a token of her husband's sacrifice, and proof that he was not a deserter.

Colonel Enos of Connecticut abandoned the column while it was struggling through the Dead River region, with his whole force, the rear-guard, numbering eight hundred men. But for this defection Arnold might have triumphed in his a.s.sault on Quebec. It is a curious circ.u.mstance that, with this traitor at the rear, and with Benedict Arnold at its head, the little army also counted in its ranks Aaron Burr, whose treason was to ripen after the war ended.

[3] _The Sword Dham_.--Antar, the Bedouin poet-hero, was chief of the tribe of Ghaylib.

[4] _The Name of Was.h.i.+ngton_.--Read before the Sons of the Revolution, New-York, February 22, 1887, and adopted as the poem of the Society.

[5] _Marthy Virginia's Hand_.--This was an actual incident in the experience of the late Colonel (formerly Captain) Albert J. Munroe. of the Third Rhode Island Artillery, a gallant officer, gentle and brave as well in peace as in war.

[6] _Gettysburg: A Battle Ode_.--Written for the Society of the Army of the Potomac, and read at its re-union with Confederate survivors on the field of Gettysburg, July 3, 1888, the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Battle.