Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
May-Day at Manassas
By George B. WallaceThe skies were bright, the fields were gay
With blossoms, butterflies, and bees,
And singing birds in the cherry-trees;
And the air from gardens, woods, and bowers
Was sweet with the breath of vernal flowers;
And the waving wheat-fields seemed to me
The gleaming waves of a summer sea,
That May-day at Manassas.
Enlivened far and wide the scene;
And here and there, on hill and plain,
Stood clustering stacks of hay and grain;
And near the old-time mansion played
Its pickaninnies in the shade,
While the “field-hand” slave forgot his wrongs
Of bondage, in his cheerful songs,
That May-day at Manassas.
In the morning of another May;
But what an awful change was there,
Affecting even the light and air!
Are these realities? They seem
The horrors of a hideous dream.
I looked appalled and in surprise
On the blackened earth and smoky skies,
That May-day at Manassas.
Their very landmarks were effaced;
No flocks or herds or stacks of grain
Were visible on hill or plain;
But pits, redoubts, and many a mound,
Where the bones of men in the shallow ground
Lay buried from the battle’s toil,
Or partly whitening on the soil,
That May-day at Manassas.