Kearny at Seven Pines

Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833–1908)

SO that soldierly legend is still on its journey,—

That story of Kearny who knew not to yield!

’T was the day when with Jameson, fierce Berry, and Birney,

Against twenty thousand he rallied the field.

Where the red volleys poured, where the clamor rose highest,

Where the dead lay in clumps through the dwarf oak and pine,

Where the aim from the thicket was surest and nighest,—

No charge like Phil Kearny’s along the whole line.

When the battle went ill, and the bravest were solemn,

Near the dark Seven Pines, where we still held our ground,

He rode down the length of the withering column,

And his heart at our war-cry leapt up with a bound;

He snuffed, like his charger, the wind of the powder,—

His sword waved us on and we answered the sign:

Loud our cheer as we rushed, but his laugh rang the louder,

“There ’s the devil’s own fun, boys, along the whole line!”

How he strode his brown steed! How we saw his blade brighten

In the one hand still left,—and the reins in his teeth!

He laughed like a boy when the holidays heighten,

But a soldier’s glance shot from his visor beneath.

Up came the reserves to the mellay infernal,

Asking where to go in,—through the clearing or pine?

“O, anywhere! Forward! ’T is all the same, Colonel:

You ’ll find lovely fighting along the whole line!”

O, evil the black shroud of night at Chantilly,

That hid him from sight of his brave men and tried!

Foul, foul sped the bullet that clipped the white lily,

The flower of our knighthood, the whole army’s pride!

Yet we dream that he still,—in that shadowy region

Where the dead form their ranks at the wan drummer’s sign,—

Rides on, as of old, down the length of his legion,

And the word still is Forward! along the whole line.