Up from the South at break
of day,
Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay,
The
affrighted air with a shudder bore,
Like a herald in
haste, to the chieftain's door,
The terrible grumble, and
rumble, and roar,
Telling the battle was on once more,
And Sheridan twenty miles away.
And wider still those
billows of war
Thundered along the horizon's bar;
And
louder yet into Winchester rolled
The roar of that red
sea uncontrolled,
Making the blood of the listener cold,
As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray,
And
Sheridan twenty miles away.
But there is a road from
Winchester town,
A good, broad highway leading down;
And there, through the flush of the morning light,
A
steed as black as the steeds of night,
Was seen to pass,
as with eagle flight,
As if he knew the terrible need;
He stretched away with his utmost speed;
Hills rose and
fell; but his heart was gay,
With Sheridan fifteen miles
away.
Still sprung from those swift hoofs, thundering
South,
The dust, like smoke from the cannon's mouth;
Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster,
Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster.
The heart of
the steed and the heart of the master
Were beating like
prisoners assaulting their walls,
Impatient to be where
the battle-field calls;
Every nerve of the charger was
strained to full play,
With Sheridan only ten miles away.
Under his spurning feet the road
Like an arrowy
Alpine river flowed,
And the landscape sped away behind
Like an ocean flying before the wind,
And the steed, like
a bark fed with furnace fire,
Swept on, with his wild eye
full of ire.
But lo! he is nearing his heart's desire;
He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray,
With
Sheridan only five miles away.
The first that the
general saw were the groups
Of stragglers, and then the
retreating troops,
What was done? what to do? a glance
told him both,
Then striking his spurs, with a terrible
oath,
He dashed down the line, mid a storm of huzzas,
And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because
The sight of the master compelled it to pause.
With foam
and with dust, the black charger was gray
By the flash of
his eye, and the red nostril's play,
He seemed to the
whole great army to say,
"I have brought you Sheridan all
the way
From Winchester, down to save the day!"
Hurrah! hurrah for Sheridan!
Hurrah! hurrah for horse and
man!
And when their statues are placed on high,
Under
the dome of the Union sky,
The American soldiers' Temple
of Fame,
There with the glorious general's name
Be it
said, in letters both bold and bright,
"Here is the steed
that saved the day,
By carrying Sheridan into the fight,
From Winchester, twenty miles away!" |
