"COME a little
nearer, Doctor,�thank you,�let me take the cup:
Draw your
chair up,�draw it closer,�just another little sup!
May be
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?" "You were very faint, they say;
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 could n'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 could n't be the Lighter,�he could not have spoken
so,�
And I tried to answer, �Here, sir!' but I could n't
make it go;
For I could n't move a muscle, and I could
n't make it go!
"Then I thought:it 'sall 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 plainer 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!'
"Doctor 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, Doctor 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
semicircled 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 everything 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!�That
sentry, Doctor, was Elijah Ballantyne!�
First of all to
fall on Monday, after we had formed the line!�
�Welcome,
my old Sergeant, welcome! welcome by that countersign!'
And he pointed to the scar there, under this old cloak of
mine!
"As he grasped my hand, I shuddered, thinking
only of the grave;
But he smiled and pointed upward with
a bright and bloodless glaive:
�That 's the way, sir, to
Headquarters.' �What Headquarters? �Of the Brave.'
�But
the great Tower?' �That,' he answered, �is the way, sir, of
the Brave!'
"Then a sudden shame came o'er me at his
uniform of light;
At my own so old and tattered, and at
his so new and bright:
�Ah!' said he, �you have forgotten
the New Uniform to-night,�
Hurry back, for you must be
here at just twelve o'clock to-night!'
"And the next
thing I remember, you were sitting there, and I�
Doctor�did you hear a footstep? Hark!�God bless you all!
Good by!
Doctor, please to give my musket and my
knapsack, when I die,
To my son�my son that 's coming,�he
won't get here till I die!
"Tell him his old father
blessed him as he never did before,�
And to carry that
old musket�hark! a knock is at the door!�
Till the
Union�See! it opens!" "Father! father! speak once more!"
"Bless you!" gasped the old, gray Sergeant, and he lay and
said no more! |
