Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

III. War

Lee to the Rear

John Randolph Thompson (1823–1873)

[An incident in one of the battles in the Wilderness at the beginning of the campaign of 1864]

DAWN of a pleasant morning in May

Broke through the Wilderness cool and gray;

While perched in the tallest tree-tops, the birds

Were carolling Mendelssohn’s “Songs without Words.”

Far from the haunts of men remote,

The brook brawled on with a liquid note;

And Nature, all tranquil and lovely, wore

The smile of the spring, as in Eden of yore.

Little by little, as daylight increased,

And deepened the roseate flush in the East—

Little by little did morning reveal

Two long glittering lines of steel;

Where two hundred thousand bayonets gleam,

Tipped with the light of the earliest beam,

And the faces are sullen and grim to see

In the hostile armies of Grant and Lee.

All of a sudden, ere rose the sun,

Pealed on the silence the opening gun—

A little white puff of smoke there came,

And anon the valley was wreathed in flame.

Down on the left of the Rebel lines,

Where a breastwork stands in a copse of pines,

Before the Rebels their ranks can form,

The Yankees have carried the place by storm.

Stars and Stripes on the salient wave,

Where many a hero has found a grave,

And the gallant Confederates strive in vain

The ground they have drenched with their blood, to regain.

Yet louder the thunder of battle roared—

Yet a deadlier fire on the columns poured;

Slaughter infernal rode with Despair,

Furies twain, through the murky air.

Not far off, in the saddle there sat

A gray-bearded man in a black slouched hat;

Not much moved by the fire was he,

Calm and resolute Robert Lee.

Quick and watchful he kept his eye

On the bold Rebel brigades close by,—

Reserves that were standing (and dying) at ease,

While the tempest of wrath toppled over the trees.

For still with their loud, deep, bull-dog bay,

The Yankee batteries blazed away,

And with every murderous second that sped

A dozen brave fellows, alas! fell dead.

The grand old graybeard rode to the space

Where Death and his victims stood face to face,

And silently waved his old slouched hat—

A world of meaning there was in that!

“Follow me! Steady! We ’ll save the day!”

This was what he seemed to say;

And to the light of his glorious eye

The bold brigades thus made reply:

“We ’ll go forward, but you must go back”—

And they moved not an inch in the perilous track:

“Go to the rear, and we ’ll send them to hell!”

And the sound of the battle was lost in their yell.

Turning his bridle, Robert Lee

Rode to the rear. Like waves of the sea,

Bursting the dikes in their overflow,

Madly his veterans dashed on the foe.

And backward in terror that foe was driven,

Their banners rent and their columns riven,

Wherever the tide of battle rolled

Over the Wilderness, wood and wold.

Sunset out of a crimson sky

Streamed o’er a field of ruddier dye,

And the brook ran on with a purple stain,

From the blood of ten thousand foemen slain.

Seasons have passed since that day and year—

Again o’er its pebbles the brook runs clear,

And the field in a richer green is drest

Where the dead of a terrible conflict rest.

Hushed is the roll of the Rebel drum,

The sabres are sheathed, and the cannon are dumb;

And Fate, with his pitiless hand, has furled

The flag that once challenged the gaze of the world;

But the fame of the Wilderness fight abides;

And down into history grandly rides,

Calm and unmoved as in battle he sat,

The gray-bearded man in the black slouched hat.