(GARFIELD)


The day dies softly, veiled with roseate gold;
A few white clouds, like phantom ships, float by,
And fleck the vaulted height of ether blue,
While Darkness lights the candles of the sky.

The night at Elberon falls fair and clear,
And Silence broods upon it like a dove;
A dreamy beauty rests upon the shore,
Made radiant by the beacon-lights above.

The grand old ocean, ceasing from its toils,
To-night sounds not its lash of angry strife,

After all —
mine is the joy
Which naught can lessen or destroy.
For love has led my flying feet
Where immortelles are springing sweet,
And everlasting skies of gold
Are memories, when earth is cold
And though our future paths should lie
Estranged, as star-ways, through the sky,
I shall not look reproof, nor find
Within this pass a charge unkind,
And lightly sorrow shall be met
For I can never know regret.

I

The gray war-horse, impatient, champs his bit,
His spreading nostrils sniff the coming fight,
But still as stone his rider's eagle eye
Looks on the serried lines that meet his sight.

Each feature tells a tale they may not know —
A volume may be spoken in each breath;
But grave and stern, with silence on his lips,
The gallant Cleburne waits the charge of Death.

Behind their works loom up the lines of Blue,
Before, the timber felled by cautious hands
To break the ranks of Gray; 'twixt these a floor

'Tis the beat of the drum, 't is the reveille,
From the camp and field of the Past;
'T is an echo that rolls to the warrior years,
Of the sound of a bugle blast.

'T is the clashing of steel, and the bayonet's gleam
That glints on the ambient air,
And the Southern Cross with its starry field
Sweeps the breeze like a patriot's prayer.

'T is the charging of Death where Justice drooped
On her altar bathed in blood;
'T is the baying of guns, like the hounds unleashed,
That swells on the breast of the flood.

The silence shall be broken on the hill,
The lips that hid their secret in the clay
Shall open from the poor dumb grief of earth,
When comes the Reveille.

From every field of whiting, bleaching bones,
Where dear remembered love kneels down to pray,
Shall wake the soldier, lying on his arms,
When comes the Reveille.

The widow's tears shall cease, — the mother's smile
Shall be the nimbus of the Blue and Gray, —
The chieftain on his shield, the dead unknown,
When comes the Reveille.

Thus through the beating of the reveille,
Through bloody conflict, blent with gray and blue,
Until the breath of peace with solemn hush
Has stilled the throbbing of the last tattoo;

Until the form of Justice, pale and wan,
Arising from the iron reign of Mars,
Has laved her garment in the well of truth,
And lifted up her glories to the stars;

Has bound a halo on each sunken mound,
And washed the field and cleansed the blood-stained stream,
And in the night-watch trailed her mantle down
The fair Valhalla of the warriors' dream.

All the pretty baubles spread
Are not the answer to my need,
These tinseled trappings but beguile
This journeying, while deep within
A want unspeakable resides,
That throbs and throbs unceasingly,—
So hungering,—no banquet spread
Can tempt it, and no golden wine
Make it forget: I balance it—
The world flies upward in the scale!
Always, unsoothed, unquieted,
It aches and aches across the days
And sears the nights that sum my life.

'Tis a treasure from out the old cedar chest
That a brave wife sacredly keeps,
All hidden away 'neath the bullet-ploughed hat,
Where the tattered old gray coat sleeps;

And the years drift softly and silently down,
The spider has woven her sheen —
A mantle of peace — like a halo of rest —
Round the heart of the Old Canteen.

It was battered and bent in the storm of war,
Where the hurtling grape-shot fell,
And it breathes in its sleep the mystical tale
That the Southland must know so well.

( NATHAN BEDFORD FORREST )

'Twas out of the South that the lion heart came,
From the ranks of the Gray like the flashing of flame,
A juggler with fortune, a master with fame —
The rugged heart born to command.

As he rode by the star of an unconquered will,
And he struck with the might of an undaunted skill,
Unschooled, but as firm as the granite-flanked hill —
As true and as tried as steel.

Though the Gray were outnumbered, he counted no odd,
But fought like a demon and struck like a god,

There's nothing certain, nothing sure
Save sorrow. Fragile happiness
Was never fashioned to endure;
For joy repels the perfect claim
And answers to no certain name;
How furtively we scan the mist
Perchance amid the gloom to find
Some moments rare and rapture-kist