No More Learning

They wail for the living, whose passion of battle, yet burning,
Sears and enfolds them in coils, and consumes, like a serpent of fire!


VI

Men of New Hampshire, Pennsylvanians,
Maine men, firm as the rock's rough ledge!
Swift Mississippians, lithe Carolinians
Bursting over the battle's edge!
Bold Indiana men; gallant Virginians;
Jersey and Georgia legions clashing;--
Pick of Connecticut; quick Vermonters;
Louisianians, madly dashing;--
And, swooping still to fresh encounters,
New-York myriads, whirlwind-led! --
All your furious forces, meeting,
Torn, entangled, and shifting place,
Blend like wings of eagles beating
Airy abysses, in angry embrace.
Here in the midmost struggle combining--
Flags immingled and weapons crossed--
Still in union your States troop shining:
Never a star from the lustre is lost!


VII

Once more the sun deploys his rays:
Third in the trilogy of battle-days
The awful Friday comes:
A day of dread,
That should have moved with slow, averted head
And muffled feet,
Knowing what streams of pure blood shed,
What broken hearts and wounded lives must meet
Its pitiless tread.
At dawn, like monster mastiffs baying,
Federal cannon, with a din affraying,
Roused the old Stonewall brigade,
That, eagerly and undismayed,
Charged amain, to be repelled
After four hours' bitter fighting,
Forth and back, with bayonets biting;
Where in after years, the wood--
Flayed and bullet-riddled--stood
A presence ghostly, grim and stark,
With trees all withered, wasted, gray,
The place of combat night and day
Like marshaled skeletons to mark.
Anon, a lull: the troops are spelled.
No sound of guns or drums
Disturbs the air.
Only the insect-chorus faintly hums,
Chirping around the patient, sleepless dead
Scattered, or fallen in heaps all wildly spread;
Forgotten fragments left in hurried flight;
Forms that, a few hours since, were human creatures,
Now blasted of their features,
Or stamped with blank despair;
Or with dumb faces smiling as for gladness,
Though stricken by utter blight
Of motionless, inert, and hopeless sadness.
Fear you the naked horrors of a war?
Then cherish peace, and take up arms no more.
For, if you fight, you must
Behold your brothers' dust
Unpityingly ground down
And mixed with blood and powder,
To write the annals of renown
That make a nation prouder!


VIII

All is quiet till one o'clock;
Then the hundred and fifty guns,
Metal loaded with metal in tons,
Massed by Lee, send out their shock.
And, with a movement magnificent,
Pickett, the golden-haired leader,
Thousands and thousands flings onward, as if he sent
Merely a meek interceder.
Steadily sure his division advances,
Gay as the light on its weapons that dances.
Agonized screams of the shell
The doom that it carries foretell:
Rifle-balls whistle, like sea-birds singing;
Limbs are severed, and souls set winging;
Yet Pickett's warriors never waver.
Show me in all the world anything braver
Than the bold sweep of his fearless battalions,
Three half-miles over ground unsheltered
Up to the cannon, where regiments weltered
Prone in the batteries' blast that raked
Swaths of men and, flame-tongued, drank
Their blood with eager thirst unslaked.
Armistead, Kemper, and Pettigrew
Rush on the Union men, rank against rank,
Planting their battle-flags high on the crest.
Pause not the soldiers, nor dream they of rest,
Till they fall with their enemy's guns at the breast
And the shriek in their ears of the wounded artillery stallions.
So Pickett charged, a man indued
With knightly power to lead a multitude
And bring to fame the scarred surviving few.


IX

In vain the mighty endeavor;
In vain the immortal valor;
In vain the insurgent life outpoured!
Faltered the column, spent with shot and sword;
Its bright hope blanched with sudden pallor;
While Hancock's trefoil bloomed in triple fame.
He chose the field; he saved the second day;
And, honoring here his glorious name,
Again his phalanx held victorious sway.
Meade's line stood firm, and volley on volley roared
Triumphant Union, soon to be restored,
Strong to defy all foes and fears forever.
The Ridge was wreathed with angry fire
As flames rise round a martyr's stake;
For many a hero on that pyre
Was offered for our dear land's sake,
What time in heaven the gray clouds flew
To mingle with the deathless blue;
While here, below, the blue and gray
Melted minglingly away,
Mirroring heaven, to make another day.
And we, who are Americans, we pray
The splendor of strength that Gettysburg knew
May light the long generations with glorious ray,
And keep us undyingly true!


X

Dear are the dead we weep for;
Dear are the strong hearts broken!
Proudly their memory we keep for
Our help and hope; a token
Of sacred thought too deep for
Words that leave it unspoken.
All that we know of fairest,
All that we have of meetest,
Here we lay down for the rarest
Doers whose souls rose fleetest
And in their homes of air rest,
Ranked with the truest and sweetest.