No More Learning

GETTYSBURG: A BATTLE ODE


I

Victors, living, with laureled brow,
And you that sleep beneath the sward!
Your song was poured from cannon throats:
It rang in deep-tongued bugle-notes:
Your triumph came; you won your crown,
The grandeur of a world's renown.
But, in our later lays,
Full freighted with your praise,
Fair memory harbors those whose lives, laid down
In gallant faith and generous heat,
Gained only sharp defeat.
All are at peace, who once so fiercely warred:
Brother and brother, now, we chant a common chord.


II

For, if we say God wills,
Shall we then idly deny Him
Care of each host in the fight?
His thunder was here in the hills
When the guns were loud in July;
And the flash of the musketry's light
Was sped by a ray from God's eye.
In its good and its evil the scheme
Was framed with omnipotent hand,
Though the battle of men was a dream
That they could but half understand.
Can the purpose of God pass by him?
Nay; it was sure, and was wrought
Under inscrutable powers:
Bravely the two armies fought
And left the land, that was greater than they, still theirs and ours!


III

Lucid, pure, and calm and blameless
Dawned on Gettysburg the day
That should make the spot, once fameless,
Known to nations far away.
Birds were caroling, and farmers
Gladdened o'er their garnered hay,
When the clank of gathering armors
Broke the morning's peaceful sway;
And the living lines of foemen
Drawn o'er pasture, brook, and hill,
Formed in figures weird of omen
That should work with mystic will
Measures of a direful magic--
Shattering, maiming--and should fill
Glades and gorges with a tragic
Madness of desire to kill.
Skirmishers flung lightly forward
Moved like scythemen skilled to sweep
Westward o'er the field and nor'ward,
Death's first harvest there to reap.
You would say the soft, white smoke-puffs
Were but languid clouds asleep,
Here on meadows, there on oak-bluffs,
Fallen foam of Heaven's blue deep.
Yet that blossom-white outbreaking
Smoke wove soon a martyr's shroud.
Reynolds fell, with soul unquaking,
Ardent-eyed and open-browed:
Noble men in humbler raiment
Fell where shot their graves had plowed,
Dying not for paltry payment:
Proud of home, of honor proud.
IV

Mute Seminary there,
Filled once with resonant hymn and prayer,
How your meek walls and windows shuddered then!
Though Doubleday stemmed the flood,
McPherson's Wood and Willoughby's Run
Saw ere the set of sun
The light of the gospel of blood.
And, on the morrow again,
Loud the unholy psalm of battle
Burst from the tortured Devil's Den,
In cries of men and musketry rattle
Mixed with the helpless bellow of cattle
Torn by artillery, down in the glen;
While, hurtling through the branches
Of the orchard by the road,
Where Sickles and Birney were walled with steel,
Shot fiery avalanches
That shivered hope and made the sturdiest reel.
Yet peach-bloom bright as April saw
Blushed there anew, in blood that flowed
O'er faces white with death-dealt awe;
And ruddy flowers of warfare grew,
Though withering winds as of the desert blew,
Far at the right while Ewell and Early,
Plunging at Slocum and Wadsworth and Greene,
Thundered in onslaught consummate and surly;
Till trembling nightfall crept between
And whispered of rest from the heat of the whelming strife.
But unto those forsaken of life
What has the night to say?
Silent beneath the moony sky,
Crushed in a costly dew they lie:
Deaf to plaint or paean, they:--
Freed from Earth's dull tyranny.


V

Wordless the night-wind, funereal plumes of the tree-tops swaying--
Writhing and nodding anon at the beck of the unseen breeze!
Yet its voice ever a murmur resumes, as of multitudes praying:
Liturgies lost in a moan like the mourning of far-away seas.
May then those spirits, set free, a celestial council obeying,
Move in this rustling whisper here thro' the dark, shaken trees? --
Souls that are voices alone to us, now, yet linger, returning
Thrilled with a sweet reconcilement and fervid with speechless desire?
Sundered in warfare, immortal they meet now with wonder and yearning,
Dwelling together united, a rapt, invisible choir:
Hearken! 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.