THE DEAD COMRADE1 BY RICHARD WATSON GILDER At the Burial of Grant, a Bugler Stood Forth and Sounded "Taps" Come, soldiers, arouse ye! Another has gone; Let us bury our comrade, He was true, he was brave, Bring music and banners And wreaths for his bier, No fault of the fighter That Death conquered here. And over his breast Fold the flag of his love. Great Captain of battles, We leave him with Thee! His spirit make free. 'By permission of the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Sound taps, and away! Out light, and to bed! THE VOLUNTEER BY FRANK L. STANTON The band was playing "Dixie" when he marched, marched away; An' never any likelier lad stept time to it that day; "The finest fellow of 'em all!" I heard the town-folk say. The band was playin' "Dixie " as he marched, marched away. How fast my wild arms held him,-my boy, who would not stay, The likeliest lad that answered to the captain's call that day! 66 The finest fellow of 'em all!" An' in the red array Of flags that rippled over them they marched my lad away! But a mother's fears and prayers and tears were nothing. War must slay, And the draped, deep drums were muffled as they brought him home that day! 66 The finest fellow of 'em all!" I heard the town-folk say, And his mother bendin' over him,-dead at her feet that day! (Southern.) THE SMALLEST OF THE DRUMS BY JAMES BUCKHAM When the opulence of summer unto wood and meadow comes, And within the tangled graveyard riot old-time spice and bloom, Then dear Nature brings her tribute to the "smallest of the drums," Spreads the sweetest of her blossoms on the little soldier's tomb. In the quiet country village, still they tell you how he died; And the story moves you strangely, more than other tales of war. Thrice heroic seems the hero, if he be a child beside, And the wound that tears his bosom is more sad than others far. In the ranks of Sherman's army none so young and small as he, With his face so soft and dimpled, and his innocent blue eyes. Yet of all the Union drummers he could drum most skillfully, With a spirit-said his colonel-fit to make the dead arise! In the charge of Chickamauga (so, beside his little grave, You may learn the hero's story of some villager, perchance), When his regiment sank, broken, from the rampart, like a wave, Thrice the clangor of his drum-beat rallied to a fresh advance. There he stood upon the hillside, capless, with his shining hair Blown about his childish forehead like the bright silk of the corn; And the men looked up and saw him standing brave and scathless there, As an angel on a hilltop, in the drifting mist of morn. Thrice they rallied at his drum-beat,-then the tattered flag went down! Someone caught it, waved it skyward for a moment, and then fell. In the dust, the gore, and drabble, all the stars of freedom's crown, And the soldiers beaten backward from the emblem loved so well! Then our drummer-boy, our hero, from his neck the drum-cord flung And amid the hail of bullets to the fallen banner sped. Quick he raised it from dishonor; quick before them all he sprung, And in fearless, proud defiance, waved the old flag o'er his head! For a minute's space the cheering, louder than the singing balls, And the soldiers pressing forward, closing up their broken line, Then the child's bright head, death-stricken, on his throbbing bosom falls, And the brave eyes that God lighted cease with life and soul to shine. In the flag he saved they wrapped him; in that starry shroud he lies, And the roses, and the lilacs, and the daisies seem to know; For in all that peaceful acre, sleeping 'neath the sum mer skies, There is neither mound nor tablet that is wreathed and guarded so! THE VOLUNTEER BY ELBRIDGE JEFFERSON CUTLER "At dawn," he said, "I bid them all farewell, To go where bugles call and rifles gleam." |