Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
Dreaming in the Trenches
By William Gordon McCabe (18411920)I
Where the fading fire-light starts and falls,
Alone in the twilight’s tender gloom
With the shadows that dance on the dim-lit walls.
From their antique frames in a grim repose—
Slight scholarly Ralph in his Oxford gown,
And stanch Sir Alan, who died for Montrose.
There are smiling beauties with powdered hair,
But she sits there, fairer a thousand-fold,
Leaning dreamily back in her low arm-chair.
Softly clear steal over the sweet young face,
Where a woman’s tenderness blends to-night
With the guileless pride of a knightly race.
On the old Romance—which she holds on her knee
Of Tristram, the bravest of knights in the fray,
And Iseult, who waits by the sounding sea.
As she watches the dying embers fall—
Perhaps she dreams of the knight in the book,
Perhaps of the pictures that smile on the wall.
For her cheeks flush warm with a crimson glow!
Perhaps—ah! me, how foolish and vain!
But I’d give my life to believe it so!
To offer my love and a stainless name,
Or whether I die at the head of my men,—
I’ll be true to the end all the same.
Petersburg Trenches. 1864.