KEENAN'S CHARGE BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP I The sun had set; The leaves with dew were wet: Down fell a bloody dusk On the woods, that second of May, Where Stonewall's corps, like a beast of prey, Tore through, with angry tusk. Broke and fled. No one stayed-but the dead! With curses, shrieks, and cries, Horses and wagons and men Tumbled back through the shuddering glen, And above us the fading skies. There's one hope still, Those batteries parked on the hill! The horses plunged, The cannon lurched and lunged, To join the hopeless rout. But suddenly rode a form Calmly in front of the human storm, With a stern, commanding shout: Align those guns!" (We knew it was Pleasanton's.) The cannoneers bent to obey, And worked with a will at his word: And the black guns moved as if they had heard. But ah the dread delay! "To wait is crime; O God, for ten minutes' time!" The General looked around. There Keenan sat, like a stone, With his three hundred horse alone, "Major, your men?" 66 Are soldiers, General." "Then Charge, Major! Do your best: Hold the enemy back, at all cost, Till my guns are placed,-else the army is lost. You die to save the rest!" II By the shrouded gleam of the western skies, "Cavalry, charge!" Not a man of them shrank. Rose like a greeting hail to death. Then forward they sprang, and spurred and clashed; Rode well the men, each brave as his fellow, And above in the air, with an instinct true, With clank of scabbards and thunder of steeds, Line after line the troopers came To the edge of the wood that was ringed with flame; Rode in and sabered and shot-and fell; Nor came one back his wounds to tell. And full in the midst rose Keenan, tall In the gloom, like a martyr awaiting his fall, 'Round his head, like a halo there, luminous hung. Line after line-ay, whole platoons, Struck dead in their saddles-of brave dragoons So they rode, till there were no more to ride. But over them, lying there, shattered and mute, From the cannon in place; for, heroes, you braved Over them now-year following year Over their graves the pine-cones fall, LEE TO THE REAR BY JOHN R. THOMPSON (During the battles in the Wilderness at the beginning of the campaign of 1864, General Robert E. Lee, impressed with the desperate necessity of carrying a certain peculiarly difficult position, seized the colors of a Texas regiment and undertook to lead the perilous assault in person. The troops and their colonel remonstrated with vehemence, the colonel, in his men's behalf, pledging the regiment to carry the position if General Lee would retire. The troops advanced to the charge shouting "Lee to the Rear!" as a sort of battle cry.-From American War Ballads and Lyrics.) Dawn of a pleasant morning in May Broke through the Wilderness cool and gray; 66 Were caroling Mendelssohn's Songs without Words." Far from the haunts of men remote, Little by little, as daylight increased, And deepened the roseate flush in the East- Where two hundred thousand bayonets gleam, In the hostile armies of Grant and Lee. All of a sudden, ere rose the sun, Down on the left of the Rebel lines, Where a breastwork stands in a copse of pines, Stars and Stripes on the salient wave, And the gallant Confederates strive in vain The ground they have drenched with their blood to regain. Yet louder the thunder of battler roared Yet a deadlier fire on the columns poured; |