THE OLD SERGEANT.

[This poem, which has been widely copied and is printed usually without the prelude, first appeared, in the form in which it is here given, as the Carrier's New Year's Address of the Louisville Courier-Journal, in 1863.]

The Carrier cannot sing to-day the ballads
With which he used to go

Rhyming the glad 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 deathmarch

Come up from every mart,

And he hears and feels it breathing in his bosom, And beating in his heart.

And to-day, a scarred and weather-beaten 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,

To tell the story as if what it speaks of
Had happened but last night.

"Come a little nearer, Doctor-thank you; let me take the cup:

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 ain't much 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 ?"

very faint, they say;

"You were

You must try to get to sleep now." "Doctor, have I been away?"

"Not that anybody knows of !" "Doctor-Doctor, please to stay!

There is something I must tell you, and you won't have long to stay!

"I have got my marching orders, and I'm ready now to go;

Doctor, did you say I fainted?-but it couldn't ha' been so,

For as 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 !

"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.

"And I wondered who could call me so distinctly and so slow,

Knew it couldn't be the

spoken so,

And I tried to answer,

make it go;

Lighter, he could not have

Here, sir!' but I couldn't

For I couldn't move a muscle, and I couldn't make

it go.

"Then I thought: it's all a nightmare, all a humbug and a bore;

Just another foolish grape-vine—and it won't come any more;

But it came, sir, notwithstanding, just the same way as before :

'ORDERLY SERGEANT-ROBERT BURTON!'-even louder than before.

"That is all that I remember, till a sudden burst of light,

And I stood beside the river, where we stood that Sunday night,

Waiting to be ferried over to the dark bluffs opposite,

When the river was perdition, and all hell was opposite !

"And the same old palpitation came again in all its

power,

And I heard a Bugle sounding, as from some celestial Tower;

And the same mysterious voice said: 'IT IS THE ELEVENTH HOUR!

ORDERLY SERGEANT-ROBERT BURTON-IT IS THE ELEVENTH HOUR!'

"Dr. 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, Dr. Austin?" "Nearly twelve." "Then don't you go!

Can it be that all this happened-all this-not an hour ago?

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

And where Webster semi-circled 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 old 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.

"There was where Lew Wallace showed them he was of the canny kin,

There was where old Nelson thundered, and where Rousseau waded in;

There McCook sent 'em to breakfast, and we all began to win,—

There was where the grape-shot took me, just as we began to win.

"Now, a shroud of snow and silence over every

thing was spread ;

And but for this old blue mantle and the old hat on my head,

I should not have even doubted, to this moment, I

was dead,

For my footsteps were as silent as the snow upon the dead!

Death and silence! - Death and silence! all around me as I sped!

And behold, a mighty Tower, as if builded to the dead,

To the Heaven of the heavens lifted up its mighty

head,

Till the Stars and Stripes of Heaven all seemed waving from its head!

“Round and mighty-based it towered up into the infinite

And I knew no mortal mason could have built a shaft so bright;

For it shone like solid sunshine, and a winding stair of light

Wound around it and around it till it wound clear out of sight!

"And, behold, as I approached it—with a rapt and dazzled stare

Thinking that I saw old comrades just ascending the great stair—

Suddenly the solemn challenge broke of- Halt!' and Who goes there?'

'I'm a friend,' I said, 'if you are!' 'Then advance,

sir, to the Stair!'

"I advanced!

Ballantyne !

That sentry, Doctor, was Elijah

First of all to fall on Monday, after we had formed

the line!