James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
November 30“Shot through the Heart”
By Ina Marie Porter
A
Borne on the soft wind’s wing,
The weird sweet chords of a New Year’s Song
Are struck by the coming Spring—
Ah, would ’twere last year’s Spring!
Laden with scented breath;
Do they bend and blow thus sweetly
Where the wooing air is death?
Can flowers bloom in death?
Sweet hawthorne decks the lane;
Who tuned the windharp’s thrilling string
To the sad, sad minor strain?
Hark! that sad minor strain!
Drift down in a fleecy cloud,
Not of the mist of bridal veils,
But the chill of an icy shroud—
Snow is the soldier’s shroud.
Where fairies watch their birth;
Methinks like little white babes they lie,
Still-born on their mother-earth—
Dead babes on the mother-earth.
Did the wild wind steal its moans
That fill me with an anguish of unshed tears?
’Tis the Banshee’s shivering groans!
List! it shivers, and sobs, and groans!
Wail on, for I cannot sleep;
Coldness and darkness wander with me,
The vigil of woe to keep—
Pale woe her watch must keep.
In the long, long march, did he track the snow
With his weary bleeding feet?
Was his dear face cold in the pelting rain,
Or numbed by the blinding sleet?
Barefoot through the blinding sleet!
Or did he step proud and strong
To the onward note from the bugle’s throat
When the boys cheered loud and long?
Oh, the march was long, so long!
Flashed up against the sky,
And wrote in a broad white quivering line
How Southern men could die!—
Thus martyrs fighting die!
The good steel must not rust;
His name must be the battle-cry,
His murderers bite the dust!
They yet shall gnaw the dust!
“Shot through the heart!” My own stands still,
With its breaking, breaking pain;
All, all grows dark, but the words of fire
That burn my reeling brain—
Rent heart and aching brain.
And over him bent the knee,
To smooth from his brow the dark damp hair,
And kiss him again for me?
Who kissed his dear lips for me?
He died to free thy land;
His name thou’lt find on rude headboard,
Carved there by pitying hand—
God bless that soldier’s hand!
Have wreathed their graves with flowers;
Will any gentle hand thus wreathe
That holy mound of ours?
Oh, shield that grave of ours!
And the hunger-pain are o’er;
The weary feet, fresh sandalled now,
Rest on the golden shore—
Fair, God-lit, healing shore.
In his threadbare suit, with its honor-stains,
They laid him down to rest;
Did they fold our flag, with its spotless stars,
On my poor dead brother’s breast?
Oh, dear, dear bleeding breast!
That Joy will come once more!
Then the Summer woods of the bright Southland
May leaf as they leaved of yore!
With Life they sprung of yore!
And the arcenciel may shine,
While the rose on the cheek of the blushing year
Wooes the roses back to mine:
The roses have died on mine.
And Fall sheaves gild the ground;
But the sad weird song the Banshee sings
Will follow the whole year round—
Dark Winter the whole year round!
By the maple’s living red,
But brings to mind the cold, cold sheet
That shrouds the living dead!—
Snow shrouds our darling dead!
With its Christmas berries swung;
They seem but drops of human blood
From human anguish wrung!
O God, our hearts are wrung!
When, when shall I awake?
If the words ring on, thus wildly on,
My tortured heart must break!—
God help me ere it break!