Have you heard the story that gossips tell
Of Burns
of Gettysburg?--No? Ah, well,
Brief is the glory that
hero earns,
Briefer the story of poor John Burns:
He
was the fellow who won renown,--
The only man who didn't
back down
When the rebels rode through his native town;
But held his own in the fight next day,
When all his
townsfolk ran away.
That was in July, Sixty-three,
The
very day that General Lee,
Flower of Southern chivalry,
Baffled and beaten, backward reeled
From a stubborn Meade
and a barren field.
I might tell how but the day before
John Burns stood at his cottage door,
Looking down the
village street,
Where, in the shade of his peaceful vine,
He heard the low of his gathered kine,
And felt their
breath with incense sweet
Or I might say, when the sunset
burned
The old farm gable, he thought it turned
The
milk that fell like a babbling flood
Into the milk-pail
red as blood!
Or how he fancied the hum of bees
Were
bullets buzzing among the trees.
But all such fanciful
thoughts as these
Were strange to a practical man like
Burns,
Who minded only his own concerns,
Troubled no
more by fancies fine
Than one of his calm-eyed,
long-tailed kine,--
Quite old-fashioned and
matter-of-fact,
Slow to argue, but quick to act.
That
was the reason, as some folks say,
He fought so well on
that terrible day.
And it was terrible. On the right
Raged for hours the heady fight,
Thundered the battery's
double bass,--
Difficult music for men to face;
While
on the left--where now the graves
Undulate like the
living waves
That all that day unceasing swept
Up to
the pits the Rebels kept--
Round shot ploughed the upland
glades,
Sown with bullets, reaped with blades;
Shattered fences here and there
Tossed their splinters in
the air;
The very trees were stripped and bare;
The
barns that once held yellow grain
Were heaped with
harvests of the slain;
The cattle bellowed on the plain,
The turkeys screamed with might and main,
And brooding
barn-fowl left their rest
With strange shells bursting in
each nest.
Just where the tide of battle turns,
Erect and lonely stood old John Burns.
How do you think
the man was dressed?
He wore an ancient long buff vest,
Yellow as saffron,--but his best,
And, buttoned over his
manly breast,
Was a bright blue coat, with a rolling
collar,
And large gilt buttons,--size of a dollar,--
With tails that the country-folk called "swaller."
He
wore a broad-brimmed, bell-crowned hat,
White as the
locks on which it sat.
Never had such a sight been seen
For forty years on the village green,
Since old John
Burns was a country beau,
And went to the "quiltings"
long ago.
Close at his elbows all that day,
Veterans of the Peninsula,
Sunburnt and bearded, charged
away;
And striplings, downy of lip and chin,--
Clerks
that the Home Guard mustered in,--
Glanced, as they
passed, at the hat he wore,
Then at the rifle his right
hand bore;
And hailed him, from out their youthful lore,
With scraps of a slangy _repertoire_:
"How are you, White
Hat? Put her through!"
"Your head's level!" and "Bully
for you!"
Called him "Daddy,"--begged he'd disclose
The name of the tailor who made his clothes,
And what was
the value he set on those;
While Burns, unmindful of jeer
and scoff,
Stood there picking the rebels off,--
With
his long brown rifle and bell-crown hat,
And the
swallow-tails they were laughing at.
'Twas but a
moment, for that respect
Which clothes all courage their
voices checked:
And something the wildest could
understand
Spake in the old man's strong right hand,
And his corded throat, and the lurking frown
Of his
eyebrows under his old bell-crown;
Until, as they gazed,
there crept an awe
Through the ranks in whispers, and
some men saw,
In the antique vestments and long white
hair,
The Past of the Nation in battle there;
And some
of the soldiers since declare
That the gleam of his old
white hat afar,
Like the crested plume of the brave
Navarre,
That day was their oriflamme of war.
So
raged the battle. You know the rest:
How the rebels,
beaten and backward pressed,
Broke at the final charge,
and ran.
At which John Burns--a practical man--
Shouldered his rifle, unbent his brows,
And then went
back to his bees and cows.
That is the story of old
John Burns;
This is the moral the reader learns:
In
fighting the battle, the question's whether
You'll show a
hat that's white, or a feather! |
