Of their own Sovereignty, shall never wane
And perish from the circle of the earth!"
From such a perfect text, shall Song aspire
To light her faded fire,
And into wandering music turn
Its virtue, simple, sorrowful, and stern?
His voice all elegies anticipated;
For, whatsoe'er the strain,
We hear that one refrain:
"We consecrate ourselves to them, the Consecrated!"
After the thunder-storm our heaven is blue:
Far off, along the borders of the sky,
In silver folds the clouds of battle lie,
With soft, consoling sunlight shining through;
And round the sweeping circle of your hills
The crashing cannon-thrills
Have faded from the memory of the air;
And Summer pours from unexhausted fountains
Her bliss on yonder mountains:
The camps are tenantless, the breastworks bare:
Earth keeps no stain where hero-blood was poured:
The hornets, humming on their wings of lead,
Have ceased to sting, their angry swarms are dead,
And, harmless in its scabbard, rusts the sword!
Oh, not till now, - Oh, now we dare, at last,
To give our heroes fitting consecration!
Not till the soreness of the strife is past,
And Peace hath comforted the weary Nation!
So long her sad, indignant spirit held
One keen regret, one throb of pain, unquelled;
So long the land about her feet was waste,
The ashes of the burning lay upon her,
We stood beside their graves with brows abased,
Waiting the purer mood to do them honor!
And yet, ye Dead! — and yet
Our clouded natures cling to one regret:
We are not all resigned
To yield, with even mind,
Our scarcely risen stars, that here untimely set.
We needs must think of History that waits
For lines that live but in their proud beginning,
Arrested promises and cheated fates,
Youth's boundless venture and its single winning! We see the ghosts of deeds they might have done,
The phantom homes that beaconed their endeavor;
The seeds of countless lives, in them begun,
That might have multiplied for us forever!
We grudge the better strain of men
That proved itself, and was extinguished then,
The field, with strength and hope so thickly sown,
Wherefrom no other harvest shall be mown:
For all the land, within its clasping seas,
Is poorer now in bravery and beauty,
Such wealth of manly loves and energies
Was given to teach us all the free man's sacred duty!
Brief is the glory that hero earns,
Briefer the story of poor John Burns:
He was the fellow who won renown,
The only man who did n't back down
When the rebels rode through his native town,
But held his own in the fight next day,
When all his townsfolk ran away.
That was in July, sixty-three,
The very day that General Lee,
Flower of Southern chivalry,
Baffled and beaten, backward reeled
From a stubborn Meade and a barren field.
I might tell how, but the day before,
John Burns stood at his cottage door,
Looking down the village street,
Where, in the shade of his peaceful vine,
He heard the low of his gathered kine,
And felt their breath with incense sweet;
Or I might say, when the sunset burned
The old farm gable, he thought it turned
The milk, that fell in a babbling flood
Into the milk-pail, red as blood!
Or how he fancied the hum of bees
Were bullets buzzing among the trees.
But all such fanciful thoughts as these
Were strange to a practical man like Burns,
Who minded only his own concerns,
Troubled no more by fancies fine
Than one of his calm-eyed, long-tailed kine, – Quite old-fashioned and matter-of-fact,
Slow to argue, but quick to act.
That was the reason, as some folks say,
He fought so well on that terrible day.
And it was 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 répertoire:
"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.
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