No More Learning

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.
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.