AN IDYL.

Yield the grave its rights — undying -
Corruption claiming its redress.
With his death-glazed sight, beholding
All the dark funereal show;
Feeling living fibre mouldering,
And the crawling worms also.

Let him see grim insurrection,
(Rebellion by rebellion paid,)
Arson, pillage, fierce defection,
Blazing homestead, murderous raid.
Or hear to merry music treading,
Ransomed slaves, rejoicing well,
For him, an undersong pervading
Mutterings of defrauded hell.

Blight his hopes, disgrace his name,
Blast his roof-tree with pollution,
Drag his household down to shame.
Let consuming hate and malice

Gnaw his heart like vultures Commend unto his lips a chalice, Poisoned with the scorn of men.

Skulking, (guilty fear confounding,)
In his forests dank and grim,
Every loyal bugle sounding

then

Like the judgment trump to him. Let his last breath be, when dying, Miasma from his Southern bogs; Dead, then leave his carrion lying,

"In that last ditch " like a dog's.

1

197

THE OLD SERGEANT.*

THE Carrier cannot sing to-day the ballads

With which he used to go,

Rhyming the grand-rounds of the happy New-Years
That are now beneath the snow;

For the same awful and portentous shadow

That overcast the earth,

And smote the land last year with desolation,

Still darkens every hearth.

And the Carrier hears Beethoven's mighty death-march

Come up from every mart,

And he hears and feels it breathing in his bosom,

And beating in his heart.

And to-day, like a scarred and weatherbeaten veteran, Again he comes along,

To tell the story of the Old Year's struggles,

In another New-Year's song.

And the song is his, but not so with the story;
For the story, you must know,

Was told in prose to Assistant-Surgeon Austin,
By a soldier of Shiloh :

By Robert Burton, who was brought up on the Adams,
With his death-wound in his side;

And who told the story to the Assistant-Surgeon
On the same night that he died:

But the singer feels it will better suit the ballad,

If all should deem it right,

*This poem was distributed on the first day of the year, 1863, by the carriers of the Louisville Journal.

THE OLD SERGEANT.

To sing the story as if what it speaks of
Had happened but last night:

199

Thank you! let me take

Draw your chair up

draw it closer just another little

sup!

Maybe you may think I'm better, but I'm pretty well

used up

Doctor, you've done all you could do, but I'm just a

going up.

"Feel my pulse, sir, if you want to, but it is no use to

try."

"Never say that,” said the surgeon, as he smothered down

a sigh,

"It will never do, old comrade, for a soldier to say die!" "What you say will make no difference, Doctor, when you come to die.

"Doctor, what has been the matter?"

faint, they say;

"You were very

"Doctor, have I

"Doctor, will you please

You must try to get to sleep now."

There is something I must tell you, and you won't have

long to stay!

"I have got my marching orders, and am ready now to

go;

Doctor, did you say I fainted? — but it could n't have

For as

been so

sure as I'm a sergeant and was wounded at Shiloh,

I've this very night been back there

on the old field

of Shiloh !

"You may think it all delusion--all the sickness of the brain

If you do, you are mistaken, and mistaken to my pain; For upon my dying honor, as I hope to live again,

I have just been back to Shiloh, and all over it again!

"This is all that I remember: the last time the Lighter

came,

And the lights had all been lowered, and the noises much the same;

He had not been gone five minutes before something called my name

'ORDERLY SERGEANT ROBERT BURTON!'- just that way it called my name.

"Then I thought, who could have called me so distinctly and so slow?

It can't be the Lighter, surely; he could not have spoken so;

And I tried to answer, 'Here, sir!' but I could n't make

it go,

For I could n't move a muscle, and I could n't make it

go!

"Then I thought, it's all a nightmare-all a humbug and a bore!

It is just another grapevine,* and it won't come any

more;

But it came, sir, notwithstanding, just the same words as

"That is all that I remenber, till a sudden burst of light, And I stood beside the river, where we stood that Sun

day night,

* I am unable to explain this slang, which appears to be Western, and born of the war.

THE OLD SERGEANT.

201

Waiting to be ferried over to the dark bluffs opposite, When the river seemed perdition and all hell seemed opposite !

“And the same old palpitation came again with all its power,

And I heard a bugle sounding as from heaven or a tower; And the same mysterious voice said: 'IT IS—the ElevENTH HOUR!

"Doctor Austin, what day is this?" "It is Wednesday night, you know."

"Yes! To-morrow will be New-Year's, and a right good time below!

What time is it, Doctor Austin? "Nearly twelve." "Then don't you go!

Can it be that all this happened — all this

ago!

not an hour

"There was where the gunboats opened on the dark, rebellious host,

And where Webster semicircled his last guns upon the

coast;

There were still the two log-houses, just the same, or else their ghost;

And the same old transport came and took me over — or

its ghost!

“And the whole field lay before me, all deserted far and

wide :

There was where they fell on Prentiss there McClernand met the tide;

There was where stern Sherman rallied, and where Hurlbut's heroes died;

Lower down, where Wallace charged them, and kept charging till he died!