"Ezra Kerr!"—and a voice answered "Here!" "Hiram Kerr!"-but no man replied. They were brothers, these two; the sad wind sighed, And a shudder crept through the cornfield near. 66 'Ephraim Deane!"-then a soldier spoke: "Deane carried our regiment's colors," he said, "When our ensign was shot; I left him dead Just after the enemy wavered and broke. 66 Close to the roadside his body lies; I paused a moment and gave him to drink; He murmured his mother's name, I think, And Death came with it and closed his eyes." 'Twas a victory,-yes; but it cost us dear: For that company's roll, when called at night, Of a hundred men who went into the fight, Numbered but twenty that answered "Here!" A SOLDIER POET BY ROSSITER JOHNSON Where swell the songs thou shouldst have sung Would call to lips that loved thee so? On what far shore of being tossed, By Rappahannock's troubled wave? If that new world hath hill and stream, And wayside flowers their story tell, So seems it to my musing mood, So runs it in my surer thought, That much of beauty, more of good, For thee the rounded years have wrought; That life will live, however blown Like vapor on the summer air; That power perpetuates its own; That silence here is music there. A GEORGIA VOLUNTEER BY MARY ASHLEY TOWNSEND Far up the lonely mountain-side The trace of a dismantled fort Lay in the forest nave, And in the shadow near my path I saw a soldier's grave. The bramble wrestled with the weed I raised it with a reverent hand, I saw the toad and scaly snake And hide themselves among the weeds His coffin but the mountain soil, I heard the Shenandoah roll I knew the sleeper had been one Yet whence he came, what lip shall sayWhose tongue will ever tell What desolated hearths and hearts Have been because he fell? What sad-eyed maiden braids her hair, What mother, with long watching eyes, Her boy! whose mountain grave swells up But one of many a scar, Cut on the face of our fair land, By gory-handed war. What fights he fought, what wounds he wore, Are all unknown to fame; There is not e'en a name! And held his country dear, We know, else he had never been A Georgia Volunteer. He sleeps what need to question now If he were wrong or right? He knows, ere this, whose cause was just He wields no warlike weapons now, Returns no foeman's thrust Who but a coward would revile An honest soldier's dust? Roll, Shenandoah, proudly roll, Above thee lies the grave of one Unknown, unnamed, forgotten, lies THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD BY THEODORE O'HARA The muffled drum's sad roll has beat No more on Life's parade shall meet And Glory guards, with solemn round, No rumor of the foe's advance Now swells upon the wind; No troubled thought at midnight haunts Of loved ones left behind; No vision of the morrow's strife The warrior's dream alarms; No braying horn nor screaming fife At dawn shall call to arms. |