Classic Poem

Gloomily, murkily,
Menacing dread,
Lowers the shroud of dun;
Gone is the lurid sun;
Cheerless the waters run,
Pale as the dead.

Solemnly, bodingly
Floweth the tide,
Murmuring a lonely sound,
Heard in the hush around.
Hearken! from yonder mound
Whippoorwill cried.

Shrilly the katydids
Scream from the trees.
Frogs in the river's edge
Croak to the rustling sedge.
Fearful in bush and hedge
Rustles the breeze.

Softly the voices float,
Float to the shore;
Like a forgotten tone,
Waking in midnight lone,
Momently heard and known,
Lost evermore.

Louder the voices grow
Out on the deep.
Nearer and yet more nigh
On to their doom they hie,
Nearer and yet more nigh,—
Long be their sleep.

Leaving the river's bank,
Groping the road,
Pass they the bushy stream,
Dark as a murderer's dream.
Ghastly its pallid gleam
Glimmered and flowed.

Thunders a sudden crash
Close, close at hand;
Flash thirty guns hard by;
And, with a horrid cry,
Thirty forms, rising nigh,
Rush on the band.

One by one there they fell,
Fell as they stood,
Hemmed by their circling foes,
Slaughtered in deadly close
(Wildly the yells arose),
Fell in their blood!

One by one fell they all,
Staining the sod.
There in the nightly hall,
Hard by the woodland wall,
Darkness their only pall,
Seen but by God.

Peacefully, sunnily,
Blossom their graves,
Under the willow-stem.
Softly its requiem
Sighs the old stream for them,
Murmur its waves.

Still is the tale by the
Cabin-door told.
Grouped in the moonlight they
Speak of red border fray,
Worthy of martial lay,—
Wild deeds and bold.

Solemnly all the pines
Wave overhead.
Swaying the rifted boughs,
Sadly the night-wind flows,
Breathing a dirge for those
Now with the dead.