So that soldierly legend is still on
its journey,--
That story of Kearny who knew not to
yield!
'Twas the day when with Jameson, fierce
Berry, and Birney,
Against twenty thousand he rallied the
field,
Where the red volleys poured, where the clamor
rose highest,
Where the dead lay in clumps through the
dwarf oak and pine,
Where the aim from the thicket was
surest and nighest,--
No charge like Phil Kearny's along
the whole line.
When the battle went ill, and the
bravest were solemn,
Near the dark Seven Pines, where we
still held our ground,
He rode down the length of the
withering column,
And his heart at our war-cry leapt up
with a bound;
He snuffed, like his charger, the wind of
our powder,--
His sword waved us on and we answered the
sign:
Loud our cheer as we rushed, but his laugh rang the
louder,
"There's the devil's own fun, boys, along the
whole line!"
How he strode his brown steed! How we
saw his blade brighten
In the one hand still left,--and
the reins in his teeth!
He laughed like a boy when the
holidays heighten,
But a soldier's glance shot from his
visor beneath.
Up came the reserves to the mellay
infernal,
Asking where to go in,--through the clearing or
pine?
"O, anywhere! Forward! 'Tis all the same, Colonel:
You'll find lovely fighting along the whole line!"
O,
evil the black shroud of night at Chantilly,
That hid him
from sight of his brave men and tried!
Foul, foul sped
the bullet that clipped the white lily,
The flower of our
knighthood, the whole army's pride!
Yet we dream that he
still,--in that shadowy region
Where the dead form their
ranks at the wan drummer's sign,--
Rides on, as of old,
down the length of his legion,
And the word still is
Forward! along the whole line. |
