John Brown’s Body: Book VII

They came on to fish-hook Gettysburg in this way, after this fashion. Over hot pikes heavy with pollen, past fields where the wheat was high. Peaches grew in the orchards; it was a fertile country, Full of red barns and fresh springs and dun, deep-uddered kine.

A farmer lived with a clear stream that ran through his very house-room, They cooled the butter in it and the milk, in their wide, stone jars; A dusty Georgian came there, to eat and go on to battle; They dipped the milk from the jars, it was cold and sweet in his mouth.

He heard the clear stream’s music as the German housewife served him, Remembering the Shenandoah and a stream poured from a rock; He ate and drank and went on to the gunwheels crushing the harvest. It was a thing he remembered as long as any guns.

Country of broad-backed horses, stone houses and long, green meadows, Where Getty came with his ox-team to found a steady town And the little trains of my boyhood puffed solemnly up the Valley Past the market-squares and the lindens and the Quaker meeting-house.

Penn stood under his oak with a painted sachem beside him, The market-women sold scrapple when the first red maples turned; When the buckeyes slipped from their sheaths, you could gather a pile of buckeyes, Red-brown as old polished boots, good to touch and hold in the hand.

The ice-cream parlor was papered with scenes from Paul and Virginia, The pigs were fat all year, you could stand a spoon in the cream. —Penn stood under his oak with a feathered pipe in his fingers, His eyes were quiet with God, but his wits and his bargain sharp.

So I remember it all, and the light sound of buckeyes falling On the worn rose-bricks of the pavement, herring-boned, trodden for years; The great yellow shocks of wheat and the dust-white road through summer, And, in Fall, the green walnut shells, and the stain they left for a while.

So I remember you, ripe country of broad-backed horses, Valley of cold, sweet springs and dairies with limestone-floors; And so they found you that year, when they scared your cows with their cannon, And the strange South moved against you, lean marchers lost in the corn.

Two months have passed since Jackson died in the woods And they brought his body back to the Richmond State House To lie there, heaped with flowers, while the bells tolled, Two months of feints and waiting. And now, at length, The South goes north again in the second raid, In the last cast for fortune. A two-edged chance And yet a chance that may burnish a failing star; For now, on the wide expanse of the Western board, Strong pieces that fought for the South have been swept away Or penned up in hollow Vicksburg. One cool Spring night Porter’s ironclads run the shore-batteries Through a velvet stabbed with hot flashes. Grant lands his men, Drives the relieving force of Johnston away And sits at last in front of the hollow town Like a huge brown bear on its haunches, terribly waiting. His guns begin to peck at the pillared porches, The sleepy, sun-spattered streets. His siege has begun.

Forty-eight days that siege and those guns go on Like a slow hand closing around a hungry throat, Ever more hungry. The hunger of hollow towns, The hunger of sieges, the hunger of lost hope. As day goes by after day and the shells still whine Till the town is a great mole-burrow of pits and caves Where the thin women hide their children, where the tired men Burrow away from the death that falls from the air And the common sky turned hostile—and still no hope, Still no sight in the sky when the morning breaks But the brown bear there on his haunches, steadfastly waiting, Waiting like Time for the honey-tree to fall.

The news creeps back to the watchers oversea. They ponder on it, aloof and irresolute The balance they watch is dipping against the South. It will take great strokes to redress that balance again. There will be one more moment of shaken scales When the Laird rams almost alter the scheme of things, But it is distant. The watchers stare at the board Waiting a surer omen then Chancellorsville Or any battle won on a Southern ground.

Lee sees that dip of the balance and so prepares His cast for the surer omen and his last stroke At the steel-bossed Northern shield. Once before he tried That spear-rush North and was halted. It was a chance. This is a chance. He weighs the chance in his hand Like a stone, reflecting. Four years from Harper’s Ferry Two years since the First Manassas—and this last year Stroke after stroke successful—but still no end.

He is a man with a knotty club in his hand Beating off bulls from the breaks in a pasture fence And he has beaten them back at each fresh assault, McClellan—Burnside—Hooker at Chancellorsville— Pope at the Second Manassas—Banks in the Valley— But the pasture is trampled; his army needs new pasture. An army moves like a locust, eating the grain, And this grain is well-nigh eaten. He cannot mend The breaks in his fence with famine or starving hands, And if he waits the wheel of another year The bulls will come back full-fed, shaking sharper horns While he faces them empty, armed with a hunger-cracked Unmagic stick. There is only this thing to do, To strike at the shield with the strength that he still can use Hoping to burst it asunder with one stiff blow And carry the war up North, to the untouched fields Where his tattered men can feed on the bulls’ own grain, Get shoes and clothes, take Washington if they can, Hold the fighting-gauge in any event. He weighs The chance in his hand. I think that he weighed it well And felt a high-tide risen up in his heart And in his men a high tide. They were veterans, They had never been beaten wholly and blocked but once, He had driven four Union armies within a year And broken three blue commanders from their command. Even now they were fresh from triumph. He cast his stone Clanging at fortune, and set his fate on the odds.

Lincoln hears the rumor in Washington. They are moving North. The Pennsylvania cities Hear it and shake, they are loose, they are moving North. Call up your shotgun-militia, bury your silver, Shoulder a gun or run away from the State, They are loose, they are moving. Fighting Joe Hooker has heard it, He swings his army back across the Potomac, Rapidly planning, while Lee still visions him South. Stuart’s horse should have brought the news of that move But Stuart is off on a last and luckless raid Far to the East, and the grey host moves without eyes Through crucial days. They are in the Cumberland now, Taking minor towns, feeding fat for a little while, Pressing horses and shoes, paying out Confederate bills To slow Dutch storekeepers who groan at the money. They are loose, they are in the North, they are here and there. Halleck rubs his elbows and wonders where, Lincoln is sleepless, the telegraph-sounders click In the War Office day and night. There are lies and rumors, They are only a mile from Philadelphia now, They are burning York—they are marching on Baltimore—

Meanwhile, Lee rides through the heart of the Cumberland. A great hot sunset colors the marching men, Colors the horse and the sword and the bearded face But cannot change that face from its strong repose. And—miles away—Joe Hooker, by telegraph Calls for the garrison left at Harper’s Ferry To join him. Elbow-rubbing Halleck refuses. Hooker resigns command—and fades from the East To travel West, fight keenly at Lookout Mountain, Follow Sherman’s march as far as Atlanta, Be ranked by Howard, and tartly resign once more Before the end and the fame and the Grand Review, To die a slow death, in bed, with his fire gone out, A campfire quenched and forgotten. He deserved A better and brusquer end that marched with his nickname, This disappointed, hot-tempered, most human man Who had such faith in himself except for once, And the once, being Chancellorsville, wiped out the rest. He was often touchy and life was touchy with him, But the last revenge was a trifle out of proportion. Such things will happen—Jackson went in his strength, Stuart was riding his horse when the bullet took him, And Custer died to the trumpet—Dutch Longstreet lived To quarrel and fight dead battles. Lee passed in silence. McClellan talked on forever in word and print. Grant lived to be President. Thomas died sick at heart.

So Hooker goes from our picture—and a spent aide Reaches Meade’s hut at three o’clock in the morning To wake him with unexpected news of command.

The thin Pennsylvanian puts on his spectacles To read the order. Tall, sad-faced and austere, He has the sharp, long nose of a fighting-bird, A prudent mouth and a cool, considering mind. An iron-gray man with none of Hooker’s panache, But resolute and able, well skilled in war; They call him “the damned old goggle-eyed snapping-turtle” At times, and he does not call out the idol-shout When he rides his lines, but his prudence is a hard prudence, And can last out storms that break the men with panache, Though it summons no counter-storm when the storm is done.

His sombre schoolmaster-eyes read the order well. It is three days before the battle. He thinks at first Of a grand review, gives it up, and begins to act.

That morning a spy brings news to Lee in his tent That the Union army has moved and is on the march. Lee calls back Ewell and Early from their forays And summons his host together by the crossroads Where Getty came with his ox-cart. So now we see These two crab-armies fumbling for each other, As if through a fog of rumor and false report, These last two days of sleepy, hay-harvest June. Hot June lying asleep on a shock of wheat Where the pollen-wind blows over the burnt-gold stubble And the thirsty men march past, stirring thick grey dust From the trodden pikes—till at last, the crab-claws touch At Getty’s town, and clutch, and the peaches fall Cut by the bullets, splashing under the trees.

That meeting was not willed by a human mind, When we come to sift it. You say a fate rode a horse Ahead of those lumbering hosts, and in either hand He carried a skein of omen. And when, at last, He came to a certain umbrella-copse of trees That never had heard a cannon or seen dead men, He knotted the skeins together and flung them down With a sound like metal. Perhaps. It may have been so. All that we know is—Meade intended to fight Some fifteen miles away on the Pipe Creek Line And where Lee meant to fight him, if forced to fight, We do not know, but it was not there where they fought. Yet the riding fate, Blind and deaf and a doom on a lunging horse, Threw down his skeins and gathered the battle there.

The buttercup-meadows Are very yellow. A child comes there To fill her hands. The gold she gathers Is soft and precious As sweet new butter Fresh from the churn.

She fills her frock With the yellow flowers, The butter she gathers Is smooth as gold, Little bright cups Of new-churned sunshine For a well-behaved Hoop-skirted doll.

Her frock’s full And her hands are mothy With yellow pollen But she keeps on. Down by the fence They are even thicker. She runs, bowed down with Buttercup-gold.

She sees a road And she sees a rider. His face is grey With a different dust. He talks loud. He rattles like tinware. He has a long sword To kill little girls.

He shouts at her now, But she does not answer. “Where is the town?” But she will not hear. There are other riders Jangling behind him. “We won’t hurt you, youngster!” But they have swords.

The buttercups fall Like spilt butter. She runs away. She runs to her house. She hides her face In her mother’s apron And tries to tell her How dreadful it was.

Buford came to Gettysburg late that night Riding West with his brigades of blue horse, While Pettigrew and his North Carolinians Were moving East toward the town with a wagon-train, Hoping to capture shoes. The two came in touch. Pettigrew halted and waited for men and orders. Buford threw out his pickets beyond the town.

The next morning was July first. It was hot and calm. On the grey side, Heth’s division was ready to march And drive the blue pickets in. There was still no thought Of a planned and decisive battle on either side Though Buford had seen the strength of those two hill-ridges Soon enough to be famous, and marked one down As a place to rally if he should be driven back.

He talks with his staff in front of a tavern now. An officer rides up from the near First Corps. “What are you doing here, sir?” The officer Explains. He, too, has come there to look for shoes. —Fabulous shoes of Gettysburg, dead men’s shoes, Did anyone ever wear you, when it was done, When the men were gone, when the farms were spoiled with the bones, What became of your nails and leather? The swords went home, The swords went into museums and neat glass cases, The swords look well there. They are clean from the war. You wouldn’t put old shoes in a neat glass case, Still stuck with the mud of marching. And yet, a man With a taste for such straws and fables, blown by the wind, Might hide a pair in a labelled case sometime Just to see how the leather looked, set down by the swords.

The officer is hardly through with his tale When Buford orders him back to his command. “Why, what is the matter, general?” As he speaks The far-off hollow slam of a single gun Breaks the warm stillness. The horses prick up their ears. “That’s the matter,” says Buford and gallops away.

Jake Diefer, the barrel-chested Pennsylvanian, Marched toward Getty’s town past orderly fences, Thinking of harvest. The boy was growing up strong And the corn-haired woman was smart at managing things But it was a shame what you had to pay hired men now Though they’d had good crops last year and good prices too. The crops looked pretty this summer. He stared at the long Gold of the wheat reflectively, weighing it all, Turning it into money and cows and taxes, A new horse-reaper, some first-class paint for the barn, Maybe a dress for the woman. His thoughts were few, But this one tasted rough and good in his mouth Like a spear of rough, raw grain. He crunched at it now. —And yet, that wasn’t all, the paint and the cash, They were the wheat but the wheat was—he didn’t know— But it made you feel good to see some good wheat again And see it grown up proper. He wasn’t a man To cut a slice of poetry from a farm. He liked the kind of manure that he knew about And seldom burst into tears when his horses died Or found a beautiful thought in a bumblebee, But now, as he tramped along like a laden steer, The tall wheat, rustling, filled his heart with its sound.

Look at that column well, as it passes by, Remembering Bull Run and the cocksfeather hats, The congressmen, the raw militia brigades Who went to war with a flag and a haircloth trunk In bright red pants and ideals and ignorance, Ready to fight like picture-postcard boys While fighting still had banners and a sword And just as ready to run in blind mob-panic. … These men were once those men. These men are the soldiers, Good thieves, good fighters, excellent foragers, The grumbling men who dislike to be killed in war And yet will hold when the raw militia break And live where the raw militia needlessly die, Having been schooled to that end. The school is not A pretty school. They wear no cocksfeather hats. Some men march in their drawers and their stocking feet. They have handkerchiefs round their heads, they are footsore and chafed, Their faces are sweaty leather. And when they pass The little towns where the people wish them godspeed, A few are touched by the cheers and the crying women But most have seen a number of crying women, And heard a number of cheers. The ruder yell back To the sincere citizens cool in their own front yards, “Aw, get a gun and fight for your home yourself!” They grin and fall silent. Nevertheless they go on.

Jake Diefer, the barrel-chested Pennsylvanian, The steer-thewed, fist-plank-splitter from Cumberland, Came through the heat and the dust and the mounting roar That could not drown the rustle of the tall wheat Making its growing sound, its windrustled sound, In his heart that sound, that brief and abiding sound, To a fork and a road he knew. And then he heard That mixed, indocile noise of combat indeed And as if it were strange to him when it was not strange. —He never took much account of the roads they went, They were always going somewhere and roads were roads. But he knew this road. He knew its turns and its hills, And what ploughlands lay beyond it, beyond the town, On the way to Chambersburg. He saw with wild eyes Not the road before him or anything real at all But grey men in an unreal wheatfield, tramping it down, Filling their tattered hats with the ripe, rough grain While a shell burst over a barn. “Grasshoppers!” he said Through stiff dry lips to himself as he tried to gauge That mounting roar and its distance. “The Johnnies is there! The Johnnies and us is fighting in Gettysburg, There must be Johnnies back by the farm already, By Jesus, those damn Johnnies is on my farm!”

That battle of the first day was a minor battle As such are counted. That is, it killed many men. Killed more than died at Bull Run, left thousands stricken With wounds that time might heal for a little while Or never heal till the breath was out of the flesh. The First Corps lost half its number in killed and wounded. The pale-faced women, huddled behind drawn blinds Back in the town, or in apple-cellars, hiding, Thought it the end of the world, no doubt. And yet As the books remark, it was only a minor battle. There were only two corps engaged on the Union side, Longstreet had not yet come up, nor Ewell’s whole force, Hill’s corps lacked a division till evening fell. It was only a minor battle. When the first shot Clanged out, it was fired from a clump of Union vedettes Holding a farm in the woods beyond the town. The farmer was there to hear it—and then to see The troopers scramble back on their restless horses And go off, firing, as a gray mass came on.

He must have been a peaceable man, that farmer. It is said that he died of what he had heard and seen In that one brief moment, although no bullet came near him And the storm passed by and did not burst on his farm. No doubt he was easily frightened. He should have reflected That even minor battles are hardly the place For peaceable men—but he died instead, it is said.

There were other deaths that day, as of Smiths and Clancys, Otises, Boyds, Virginia and Pennsylvania, New York, Carolina, Wisconsin, the gathered West, The tattered Southern marchers dead on the wheat-shocks. Among these deaths a few famous. Reynolds is dead, The model soldier, gallant and courteous, Shot from his saddle in the first of the fight. He was Doubleday’s friend, but Doubleday has no time To grieve him, the Union right being driven in And Heth’s Confederates pressing on toward the town. He holds the onrush back till Howard comes up And takes command for a while. The fighting is grim. Meade has heard the news. He sends Hancock up to the field. Hancock takes command in mid-combat. The grey comes on. Five color-bearers are killed at one Union color, The last man, dying, still holds up the sagging flag. The pale-faced women creeping out of their houses, Plead with retreating bluecoats, “Don’t leave us boys, Stay with us—hold the town.” Their faces are thin, Their words come tumbling out of a frightened mouth. In a field, far off, a peaceable farmer puts His hands to his ears, still hearing that one sharp shot That he will hear and hear till he dies of it. It is Hill and Ewell now against Hancock and Howard And a confused, wild clamor—and the high keen Of the Rebel yell—and the shrill-edged bullet song Beating down men and grain, while the sweaty fighters Grunt as they ram their charges with blackened hands.

Till Hancock and Howard are beaten away at last, Outnumbered and outflanked, clean out of the town, Retreating as best they can to a fish-hook ridge, And the clamor dies and the sun is going down And the tired men think about food. The dust-bitten staff Of Ewell, riding along through the captured streets, Hear the thud of a bullet striking their general. Flesh or bone? Death-wound or rub of the game? “The general’s hurt!” They gasp and volley their questions. Ewell turns his head like a bird, “No, I’m not hurt, sir, But, supposing the ball had struck you, General Gordon, We’d have the trouble of carrying you from the field. You can see how much better fixed for a fight I am. It don’t hurt a mite to be shot in your wooden leg.”

So it ends. Lee comes on the field in time to see The village taken, the Union wave in retreat. Meade will not reach the ground till one the next morning.

So it ends, this lesser battle of the first day, Starkly disputed and piecemeal won and lost By corps-commanders who carried no magic plans Stowed in their sleeves, but fought and held as they could. It is past. The board is staked for the greater game Which is to follow—The beaten Union brigades Recoil from the crossroads town that they tried to hold, And so recoiling, rest on a destined ground. Who chose that ground? There are claimants enough in the books. Howard thanked by Congress for choosing it As doubtless, they would have thanked him as well had he Chosen another, once the battle was won, And there are a dozen ifs on the Southern side, How, in that first day’s evening, if one had known, If Lee had been there in time, if Jackson had lived, The heights that cost so much blood in the vain attempt To take days later, could have been taken then. And the ifs and the thanks and the rest are all true enough But we can only say, when we look at the board, “There it happened. There is the way of the land. There was the fate, and there the blind swords were crossed.”

You took a carriage to that battlefield. Now, I suppose, you take a motor-bus, But then, it was a carriage—and you ate Fried chicken out of wrappings of waxed paper, While the slow guide buzzed on about the war And the enormous, curdled summer clouds Piled up like giant cream puffs in the blue. The carriage smelt of axle-grease and leather And the old horse nodded a sleepy head Adorned with a straw hat. His ears stuck through it. It was the middle of hay-fever summer And it was hot. And you could stand and look All the way down from Cemetery Ridge, Much as it was, except for monuments And startling groups of monumental men Bursting in bronze and marble from the ground, And all the curious names upon the gravestones. …

So peaceable it was, so calm and hot, So tidy and great-skied. No men had fought There but enormous, monumental men Who bled neat streams of uncorrupting bronze, Even at the Round Tops, even by Pickett’s boulder, Where the bronze, open book could still be read By visitors and sparrows and the wind: And the wind came, the wind moved in the grass, Saying … while the long light … and all so calm …

“Pickett came And the South came And the end came, And the grass comes And the wind blows On the bronze book On the bronze men On the grown grass, And the wind says ‘Long ago Long Ago.’ ”

Then it was time to buy a paperweight With flags upon it in decalcomania And hope you wouldn’t break it, driving home.

Draw a clumsy fish-hook now on a piece of paper, To the left of the shank, by the bend of the curving hook, Draw a Maltese cross with the top block cut away. The cross is the town. Nine roads star out from it East, West, South, North. And now, still more to the left Of the lopped-off cross, on the other side of the town, Draw a long, slightly-wavy line of ridges and hills Roughly parallel to the fish-hook shank. (The hook of the fish-hook is turned away from the cross And the wavy line.) There your ground and your ridges lie. The fish-hook is Cemetery Ridge and the North Waiting to be assaulted—the wavy line Seminary Ridge whence the Southern assault will come.

The valley between is more than a mile in breadth. It is some three miles from the lowest jut of the cross To the button at the far end of the fish-hook shank, Big Round Top, with Little Round Top not far away. Both ridges are strong and rocky, well made for war. But the Northern one is the stronger shorter one. Lee’s army must spread out like an uncoiled snake Lying along a fence-rail, while Meade’s can coil Or halfway coil, like a snake part clung to a stone. Meade has the more men and the easier shifts to make, Lee the old prestige of triumph and his tried skill. His task is—to coil his snake round the other snake Halfway clung to the stone, and shatter it so, Or to break some point in the shank of the fish-hook line And so cut the snake in two. Meade’s task is to hold.

That is the chess and the scheme of the wooden blocks Set down on the contour map. Having learned so much, Forget it now, while the ripple-lines of the map Arise into bouldered ridges, tree-grown, bird-visited, Where the gnats buzz, and the wren builds a hollow nest And the rocks are grey in the sun and black in the rain, And the jacks-in-the-pulpit grow in the cool, damp hollows. See no names of leaders painted upon the blocks Such as “Hill,” or “Hancock,” or “Pender”— but see instead Three miles of living men—three long double miles Of men and guns and horses and fires and wagons, Teamsters, surgeons, generals, orderlies, A hundred and sixty thousand living men Asleep or eating or thinking or writing brief Notes in the thought of death, shooting dice or swearing, Groaning in hospital wagons, standing guard While the slow stars walk through heaven in silver mail, Hearing a stream or a joke or a horse cropping grass Or hearing nothing, being too tired to hear. All night till the round sun comes and the morning breaks, Three double miles of live men. Listen to them, their breath goes up through the night In a great chord of life, in the sighing murmur Of wind-stirred wheat. A hundred and sixty thousand Breathing men, at night, on two hostile ridges set down.

Jack Ellyat slept that night on the rocky ground Of Cemetery Hill while the cold stars marched, And if his bed was harder than Jacob’s stone Yet he could sleep on it now and be glad for sleep.

He had been through Chancellorsville and the whistling wood, He had been through this last day. It is well to sleep After such days. He had seen, in the last four months, Many roads, much weather and death, and two men fey Before they died with the prescience of death to come, John Haberdeen and the corporal from Millerstown. Such things are often remembered even in sleep. He thought to himself, before he lay on the ground, “We got it hot today in that red-brick town But we’ll get it hotter tomorrow.” And when he woke And saw the round sun risen in the clear sky, He could feel that thought steam up from the rocky ground And touch each man. One man looked down from the hill, “That must be their whole damn army,” he said and whistled, “It’ll be a picnic today, boys. Yes, it’ll be A regular basket-picnic.” He whistled again.

“Shut your trap about picnics, Ace,” said another man, “You make me too damn hungry!” He sighed out loud. “We had enough of a picnic at Chancellorsville,” He said. “I ain’t felt right in my stummick since. Can you make ’em out?” “Sure,” said Ace, “but they’re pretty far.”

“Wonder who we’ll get? That bunch we got yesterday Was a mean-shootin’ bunch.” “Now don’t you worry,” said Ace, “We’ll get plenty.” The other man sighed again. “Did you see that darky woman selling hot pies, Two days ago, on the road?” he said, licking his lips, “Blackberry pies. The boys ahead got a lot And Jake and me clubbed together for three. And then Just as we were ready to make the sneak, Who comes up with a roar but the provost-guard? Did we get any pies? I guess you know if we did. I couldn’t spit for an hour, I felt so mad. Next war I’m goin’ to be provost-guard or bust.”

A thin voice said abruptly, “They’re moving—lookit— They’re moving, I tell you—lookit—” They all looked then. A little crackling noise as of burning thornsticks Began far away—ceased wholly—began again— “We won’t get it awhile,” thought Ellyat. “They’re trying the left. We won’t get it awhile, but we’ll get it soon. I feel funny today. I don’t think I’m going to be killed But I feel funny. That’s their whole army all right. I wonder if those other two felt like this, John Haberdeen and the corporal from Millerstown? What’s it like to see your name on a bullet? It must feel queer. This is going to be a big one. The Johnnies know it. That house looks pretty down there. Phaëton, charioteer in your drunken car, What have you got for a man that carries my name? We’re a damn good company now, if we say it ourselves, And the Old Man knows it—but this one’s bound to be tough. I wonder what they’re feeling like over there.

Charioteer, you were driving yesterday, No doubt, but I did not see you. I see you now. What have you got today for a man with my name?”

The firing began that morning at nine o’clock, But it was three before the attacks were launched. There were two attacks, one a drive on the Union left To take the Round Tops, the other one on the right. Lee had planned them to strike together and, striking so, Cut the Union snake in three pieces. It did not happen. On the left, Dutch Longstreet, slow, pugnacious and stubborn, Hard to beat and just as hard to convince, Has his own ideas of the battle and does not move For hours after the hour that Lee had planned, Though, when he does, he moves with pugnacious strength.

Facing him, in the valley before the Round Tops, Sickles thrusts out blue troops in a weak right angle, Some distance from the Ridge, by the Emmettsburg pike. There is a peach orchard there, a field of ripe wheat And other peaceable things soon not to be peaceful.

They say the bluecoats, marching through the ripe wheat, Made a blue-and-yellow picture that men remember Even now in their age, in their crack-voiced age. They say the noise was incessant as the sound Of all wolves howling, when that attack came on. They say, when the guns all spoke, that the solid ground Of the rocky ridges trembled like a sick child. We have made the sick earth tremble with other shakings In our time, in our time, in our time, but it has not taught us To leave the grain in the field. So the storm came on Yelling against the angle. The men who fought there Were the tried fighters, the hammered, the weather-beaten, The very hard-dying men. They came and died And came again and died and stood there and died, Till at last the angle was crumpled and broken in, Sickles shot down, Willard, Barlow and Semmes shot down, Wheatfield and orchard bloody and trampled and taken, And Hood’s tall Texans sweeping on toward the Round Tops As Hood fell wounded. On Little Round Top’s height Stands a lonely figure, seeing that rush come on— Greek-mouthed Warren, Meade’s chief of engineers. —Sometimes, and in battle even, a moment comes When a man with eyes can see a dip in the scales And, so seeing, reverse a fortune. Warren has eyes And such a moment comes to him now. He turns —In a clear flash seeing the crests of the Round Tops taken, The grey artillery there and the battle lost— And rides off hell-for-leather to gather troops And bring them up in the very nick of time, While the grey rush still advances, keening its cry. The crest is three times taken and then retaken In fierce wolf-flurries of combat, in gasping Iliads Too rapid to note or remember, too obscure to freeze in a song. But at last, when the round sun drops, when the nun-footed night, Dark-veiled walker, holding the first weak stars Like children against her breast, spreads her pure cloths there, The Union still holds the Round Tops and the two hard keys of war.

Night falls. The blood drips in the rocks of the Devil’s Den. The murmur begins to rise from the thirsty ground Where the twenty thousand dead and wounded lie.

Such was Longstreet’s war, and such the Union defence, The deaths and the woundings, the victory and defeat At the end of the fish-hook shank. And so Longstreet failed Ere Ewell and Early struck the fish-hook itself At Culp’s Hill and the Ridge and at Cemetery Hill, With better fortune, though not with fortune enough To plant hard triumph deep on the sharp-edged rocks And break the scales of the snake. When that last attack Came, with its cry, Jack Ellyat saw it come on.

They had been waiting for hours on that hard hill, Sometimes under fire, sometimes untroubled by shells. A man chewed a stick of grass and hummed to himself. Another played mumbledeypeg with a worn black knife. Two men were talking girls till they got too mad And the sergeant stopped them. Then they waited again.

Jack Ellyat waited, hearing that other roar Rise and fall, be distant and then approach. Now and then he turned on his side and looked at the sky As if to build a house of peace from that blue, But could find no house of peace there. Only the roar, The slow sun sinking, the fey touch at his mind. …

He was lying behind a tree and a chunk of rock On thick, coarse grass. Farther down the slope of the hill There were houses, a rough stone wall, and blue loungy men. Behind them lay the batteries on the crest.

He wondered if there were people still in the houses. One house had a long, slant roof. He followed the slant Of the roof with his finger, idly, pleased with the line.

The shelling burst out from the Southern guns again. Their own batteries answered behind them. He looked at his house While the shells came down. I’d like to live in that house. Now the shelling lessened. The man with the old black knife Shut up the knife and began to baby his rifle. They’re coming, Jack thought. This is it. There was an abrupt Slight stiffening in the bodies of other men, A few chopped ends of words scattered back and forth, Eyes looking, hands busy in swift, well-accustomed gestures. This is it. He felt his own hands moving like theirs Though he was not telling them to. This is it. He felt The old familiar tightness around his chest. The man with the grass chewed his stalk a little too hard And then suddenly spat it out. Jack Ellyat saw Through the falling night, that slight, grey fringe that was war Coming against them, not as it came in pictures With a ruler-edge, but a crinkled and smudgy line Like a child’s vague scrawl in soft crayon, but moving on But with its little red handkerchiefs of flags Sagging up and down, here and there. It was still quite far, It was still like a toy attack—it was swallowed now By a wood and came out larger with larger flags. Their own guns on the crest were trying to break it up —Smoking sand thrown into an ant-legged line— But it still kept on—one fringe and another fringe And another and— He lost them all for a moment In a dip of ground. This is it, he thought with a parched Mind. It’s a big one. They must be yelling all right Though you can’t hear them. They’re going to do it this time, Do it or bust—you can tell from the way they come— I hope to Christ that the batteries do their job When they get out of that dip. Hell, they’ve lost ’em now, And they’re still coming. He heard a thin gnat-shrieking “Hold your fire till they’re close enough, men!” The new lieutenant. The new lieutenant looked thin. “Aw, go home,” he muttered, “We’re no militia—What do you think we are?”

Then suddenly, down by his house, the low stone wall Flashed and was instantly huge with a wall of smoke. He was yelling now. He saw a red battleflag Push through smoke like a prow and be blotted out By smoke and flash. His heart knocked hard in his chest. “Do it or bust,” he mumbled, holding his fire While the rags of smoke blew off. He heard a thick chunk Beside him, turned his head for a flicker of time. The man who had chewed on the grass was injuredly trying To rise on his knees, his face annoyed by a smile. Then the blood poured over the smile and he crumpled up. Ellyat stretched out a hand to touch him and felt the hand Rasped by a file. He jerked back the hand and sucked it. “Bastards,” he said in a minor and even voice.

All this had occurred, it seemed, in no time at all, But when he turned back, the smoky slope of the hill Was grey—and a staggering red advancing flag And those same shouting strangers he knew so well, No longer ants—but there—and stumblingly running— And that high, shrill, hated keen piercing all the flat thunder.

His lips went back. He felt something swell in his chest Like a huge, indocile bubble. “By God,” he said, Loading and firing, “You’re not going to get this hill, You’re not going to get this hill. By God, but you’re not!”

He saw one grey man spin like a crazy dancer And another fall at his heels—but the hill kept growing them. Something made him look toward his left. A yellow-fanged face Was aiming a pistol over a chunk of rock. He fired and the face went down like a broken pipe While something hit him sharply and took his breath “Get back, you suckers,” he croaked. “Get back there, you suckers!” He wouldn’t have time to load now—they were too near. He was up and screaming. He swung his gun like a club Through a twilight full of bright stabbings, and felt it crash On a thing that broke. He had no breath any more. He had no thoughts. Then the blunt fist hit him again.

He was down in the grass and the black sheep of night ran over him …

That day, Melora Vilas sat by the spring With her child in her arms and felt the warm wind blow Ruffling the little pool that had shown two faces Apart and then clung together for a brief while As if the mouths had been silver and so fused there. …

The wind blew at the child’s shut fists but it could not open them. The child slept well. The child was a strong, young child.

“Wind, you have blown the green leaf and the brown leaf And in and out of my restless heart you blow, Wakening me again. I had thought for a while My heart was a child and could sleep like any child, But now that the wind is warm, I remember my lover, Must you blow all summer, warm wind?”

“Divide anew this once-divided flesh Into twelve shares of mercy and on each Bestow a fair and succourable child, Yet, in full summer, when the ripened stalks Bow in the wind like golden-headed men, Under the sun, the shares will reunite Into unmerciful and childless love.”

She thought again, “No, it’s not that, it’s not that, I love my child with an L because he’s little, I love my child with an S because he’s strong, With an M because he’s mine. But I’m restless now. We cut the heart on the tree but the bark’s grown back there. I’ve got my half of the dime but I want his. The winter-sleep is over.”

The shadows were longer now. The child waked and cried. She rocked and hushed it, feeling the warm wind blow. “I’ve got to find him,” she said.

About that time, the men rode up to the house From the other way. Their horses were rough and wild. There were a dozen of them and they came fast. Bent should have been out in the woods but he had come down To mend a split wagon-wheel. He was caught in the barn. They couldn’t warn him in time, though John Vilas tried, But they held John Vilas and started to search the place While the younger children scuttled around like mice Squeaking “It’s drafters, Mom—it’s the drafters again!” Even then, if Bent had hidden under the hay They might not have found him, being much pressed for time, But perhaps he was tired of hiding. At any rate When Melora reached the edge of the little clearing, She saw them there and Bent there, up on a horse, Her mother rigid as wood and her father dumb And the head man saying, gently enough on the whole, “Don’t you worry, m’am—he’ll make a good soldier yet If he acts proper.” That was how they got Bent.

On the crest of the hill, the sweaty cannoneers, The blackened Pennsylvanians, picked up their rammers And fought the charge with handspikes and clubs and stones, Biting and howling. It is said that they cried Wildly, “Death on the soil of our native state Rather than lose our guns.” A general says so. He was not there. I do not know what they cried But that they fought, there was witness—and that the grey Wave that came on them fought, there was witness too. For an instant that wheel of combat—and for an instant A brief, hard-breathing hush. Then came the hard sound Of a column tramping—blue reinforcements at last, A doomsday sound to the grey. The hard column came Over the battered crest and went in with a yell. The grey charge bent and gave ground, the grey charge was broken. The sweaty gunners fell to their guns again And began to scatter the shells in the ebbing wave.

Thus ended the second day of the locked bull-horns And the wounding or slaying of the twenty thousand. And thus night came to cover it. So the field Was alive all night with whispers and words and sighs, So the slow blood dripped in the rocks of the Devil’s Den. Lincoln, back in his White House, asks for news. The War Department has little. There are reports Of heavy firing near Gettysburg—that is all. Davis, in Richmond, knows as little as he. In hollow Vicksburg, the shells come down and come down And the end is but two days off. On the field itself Meade calls a council and considers retreat. His left has held and the Round Tops still are his. But his right has been shaken, his centre pierced for a time, The enemy holds part of his works on Culp’s Hill, His losses have been most stark. He thinks of these things And decides at last to fight it out where he stands.

Ellyat lay upon Cemetery Hill. His wounds had begun to burn. He was rising up Through cold and vacant darknesses into faint light, The yellow, watery light of a misty moon. He stirred a little and groaned. There was something cool On his face and hands. It was dew. He lay on his back And stared at a blowing cloud and a moist, dark sky. “Old charioteer,” he thought. He remembered dully The charge. The charge had come. They had beaten the charge. Now it was moist dark sky and the dew and his pain.

He tried to get his canteen but he couldn’t reach it. That made him afraid. “I want some water,” he said. He turned his head through stiff ages. Two feet away A man was lying quietly, fast asleep, A bearded man in an enemy uniform. He had a canteen. Ellyat wet his lips with his tongue. “Hey Johnnie, got some water?” he whispered weakly. Then he saw that the Johnnie had only half a head, And frowned because such men could not lend canteens.

He was half-delirious now, and it seemed to him As if he had two bodies, one that was pain And one that lay beyond pain, on a couch of dew, And stared at the other with sober wondering eyes. “Everyone’s dead around here but me,” he thought, “And as long as I don’t sing out, they’ll think that I’m dead And those stretcher-bearers won’t find me—there goes their lantern No, it’s the moon—Sing out and tell ’em you’re here.” The hot body cried and groaned. The cool watched it idly. The yellow moon burst open like a ripe fruit And from it rolled on a dark, streaked shelf of sky A car and horses, bearing the brazen ball Of the unbearable sun, that halted above him In full rush forward, yet frozen, a motion congealed, Heavy with light. Toy death above Gettysburg.

He saw it so and cried out in a weak, thin voice While something jagged fitted into his heart And the cool body watched idly. And then it was A lantern, bobbing along through the clumped dead men, That halted now for an instant. He cried again.

A voice said, “Listen, Jerry, you’re hearing things, I’ve passed that feller twice and he’s dead all right, I’ll bet you money.” Ellyat heard himself piping, “I’m alive, God damn you! Can’t you hear I’m alive?”

Something laughed, quite close now. “All right, Bub,” said a cloud, “We’ll take your word for it. My, but the boy’s got language! Go ahead and cuss while we get you up on the stretcher— It helps some—easy there, Joe.” Jack Ellyat fell Out of his bodies into a whispering blackness Through which, now and then, he could hear certain talking clouds Cough or remark. One said. “That’s two and a half You owe me, Joe. You’re pickin’ ’em wrong tonight.” “Well, poor suckers,” said Joseph. “But all the same, If this one doesn’t last till the dressing station The bet’s off—take it slower, Jerry—it hurts him.”

Another clear dawn breaks over Gettysburg, Promising heat and fair weather—and with the dawn The guns are crashing again. It is the third day. The morning wears with a stubborn fight at Culp’s Hill That ends at last in Confederate repulse And that barb-end of the fish-hook cleared of the grey.

Lee has tried his strokes on the right and left of the line. The centre remains—that centre yesterday pierced For a brief, wild moment in Wilcox’s attack, But since then trenched, reinforced and alive with guns. It is a chance. All war is a chance like that. Lee considers the chance and the force he has left to spend And states his will. Dutch Longstreet, the independent, Demurs, as he has demurred since the fight began. He had disapproved of this battle from the first And that disapproval has added and is to add Another weight in the balance against the grey. It is not our task to try him for sense or folly, Such men are the men they are—but an hour comes Sometimes, to fix such men in most fateful parts, As now with Longstreet who, if he had his orders As they were given, neither obeyed them quite Nor quite refused them, but acted as he thought best, So did the half-thing, failed as he thought he would, Felt justified and wrote all of his reasons down Later in controversy. We do not need Such controversies to see that pugnacious man Talking to Lee, a stubborn line in his brow And that unseen fate between them. Lee hears him out Unmoved, unchanging. “The enemy is there And I am going to strike him,” says Lee, inflexibly.

Wingate cursed with an equal stress The guns in the sky and his weariness, The nightmare riding of yesterday When they slept in the saddle by whole platoons And the Pennsylvania farmer’s grey With hocks as puffy as toy balloons, A graceless horse, without gaits or speed, But all he had for his time of need. “I’d as soon be riding a Jersey cow.” But the Black Horse Troop was piebald now And the Black Horse Troop was worn to the blade With the dull fatigue of this last, long raid. Huger Shepley rode in a tense Gloom of the spirit that found offence In all things under the summer skies And the recklessness in Bristol’s eyes Had lost its color of merriment. Horses and men, they were well-nigh spent. Wingate grinned as he heard the “Mount,” “Reckon we look sort of no-account, But we’re here at last for somebody’s fight.” They rode toward the curve of the Union right.

At one o’clock the first signal-gun was fired And the solid ground began to be sick anew. For two hours then that sickness, the unhushed roar Of two hundred and fifty cannon firing like one.

By Philadelphia, eighty-odd miles away, An old man stooped and put his ear to the ground And heard that roar, it is said, like the vague sea-clash In a hollow conch-shell, there, in his flowerbeds. He had planted trumpet-flowers for fifteen years But now the flowers were blowing an iron noise Through earth itself. He wiped his face on his sleeve And tottered back to his house with fear in his eyes.

The caissons began to blow up in the Union batteries. …

The cannonade fell still. All along the fish-hook line, The tired men stared at the smoke and waited for it to clear; The men in the centre waited, their rifles gripped in their hands, By the trees of the riding fate, and the low stone wall, and the guns.

These were Hancock’s men, the men of the Second Corps, Eleven States were mixed there, where Minnesota stood In battle-order with Maine, and Rhode Island beside New York, The metals of all the North, cooled into an axe of war.

The strong sticks of the North, bound into a fasces-shape, The hard winters of snow, the wind with the cutting edge, And against them came that summer that does not die with the year, Magnolia and honeysuckle and the blue Virginia flag.

Tall Pickett went up to Longstreet—his handsome face was drawn. George Pickett, old friend of Lincoln’s in days gone by with the blast, When he was a courteous youth and Lincoln the strange shawled man Who would talk in a Springfield street with a boy who dreamt of a sword.

Dreamt of a martial sword, as swords are martial in dreams, And the courtesy to use it, in the old bright way of the tales. Those days are gone with the blast. He has his sword in his hand. And he will use it today, and remember that using long.

He came to Longstreet for orders, but Longstreet would not speak. He saw Old Peter’s mouth and the thought in Old Peter’s mind. He knew the task that was set and the men that he had to lead And a pride came into his face while Longstreet stood there dumb.

“I shall go forward, sir,” he said and turned to his men. The commands went down the line. The grey ranks started to move. Slowly at first, then faster, in order, stepping like deer, The Virginians, the fifteen thousand, the seventh wave of the tide.

There was a death-torn mile of broken ground to cross, And a low stone wall at the end, and behind it the Second Corps, And behind that force another, fresh men who had not yet fought. They started to cross that ground. The guns began to tear them.

From the hill they say that it seemed more like a sea than a wave, A sea continually torn by stones flung out of the sky, And yet, as it came, still closing, closing and rolling on, As the moving sea closes over the flaws and rips of the tide.

You could mark the path that they took by the dead that they left behind, Spilled from that deadly march as a cart spills meal on a road, And yet they came on unceasing, the fifteen thousand no more, And the blue Virginia flag did not fall, did not fall, did not fall.

They halted but once to fire as they came. Then the smoke closed down And you could not see them, and then, as it cleared again for a breath, They were coming still but divided, gnawed at by blue attacks, One flank half-severed and halted, but the centre still like a tide.

Cushing ran down the last of his guns to the battle-line. The rest had been smashed to scrap by Lee’s artillery fire. He held his guts in his hand as the charge came up to the wall And his gun spoke out for him once before he fell to the ground.

Armistead leapt the wall and laid his hand on the gun, The last of the three brigadiers who ordered Pickett’s brigades, He waved his hat on his sword and “Give ’em the steel!” he cried, A few men followed him over. The rest were beaten or dead.

A few men followed him over. There had been fifteen thousand When that sea began its march toward the fish-hook ridge and the wall. So they came on in strength, light-footed, stepping like deer, So they died or were taken. So the iron entered their flesh.

Lee, a mile away, in the shade of a little wood, Stared, with his mouth shut down, and saw them go and be slain, And then saw for a single moment, the blue Virginia flag Planted beyond the wall, by that other flag that he knew.

The two flags planted together, one instant, like hostile flowers. Then the smoke wrapped both in a mantle—and when it had blown away, Armistead lay in his blood, and the rest were dead or down, And the valley grey with the fallen and the wreck of the broken wave.

Pickett gazed around him, the boy who had dreamt of a sword And talked with a man named Lincoln. The sword was still in his hand. He had gone out with fifteen thousand. He came back to his lines with five. He fought well till the war was over, but a thing was cracked in his heart.

Wingate, waiting the sultry sound That would pour the troop over hostile ground, Petted his grey like a loving son And wondered whether the brute would run When it came to fighting, or merely shy There was a look in the rolling eye That he knew too well to criticize Having seen it sometimes in other eyes. “Poor old Fatty,” he said. “Don’t fret, It’s tough, but it hasn’t happened yet And we may get through it if you behave, Though it looks just now like a right close shave.

There’s something funny about this fight—” He thought of Lucy in candlelight, White and gold as the evening star, Giving bright ribbons to men at war. But the face grew dimmer and ever dimmer, The gold was there but the gold was fainter, And a slow brush streaked it with something grimmer Than the proper tint of a lady’s painter Till the shadow she cast was a ruddy shadow. He rubbed his eyes and stared at the meadow. …

“There was a girl I used to go with, Long ago, when the skies were cooler, There was a tree we used to grow with Marking our heights with a stolen ruler.

There was a cave where we hid and fought once. There was a pool where the wind kept writing. There was a possum-child we caught once. Caged it awhile, for all its biting.

There was a gap in a fence to see there, Down where the sparrows were always wrangling. There was a girl who used to be there, Dark and thin, with her long braids dangling.

Dark and thin in her scuffed brown slippers With a boy’s sling stuck in her apron-pocket, With a sting in her tongue like a gallinipper’s And the eyes of a ghost in a silver locket.

White and gold, white and gold, You cannot be cold as she was cold, Cold of the air and the running stream And cold of the ice-tempered dream.

Gold and white, gold and white, You burn with the heat of candlelight. But what if I set you down alone Beside the burning meteor-stone?

Blow North, blow South, blow hot, blow cold, My body is pledged to white and gold, My honor given to kith and kin, And my doom-clothes ready to wrap me in For the shut heart and the open hand As long as Wingate Hall shall stand And the fire burn and the water cool And a fool beget another fool—

But now, in the hour before this fight, I have forgotten gold and white. I will remember lost delight. She has the Appleton mouth, it seems, And the Appleton way of riding, But if she quarrels or when she gleams, Something comes out from hiding. She can sew all day on an Appleton hem And look like a saint in plaster, But when the fiddles begin to play, And her feet beat fast but her heart beats faster, An alien grace is alive in them And she looks like her father, the dancing-master, The scapegrace elegant, ‘French Dupré.’ ”

Then the word came and the bugle sang And he was part of the running clang, The rush and the shock and the sabres licking And the fallen horses screaming and kicking. His grey was tired and his arm unsteady And he whirled like a leaf in a shrieking eddy Where every man was fighting his neighbor And there was no room for the tricks of sabre But only a wild and nightmare sickling. His head felt burnt—there was something trickling Into his eyes—then the new charge broke The eddy apart like scattered smoke; The cut on his head half made him blind. If he had a mind, he had lost that mind.

He came to himself in a battered place, Staring at Wainscott Bristol’s face, The dried blood made it a ferret’s mask.

“What happened?” he croaked. “Well, you can ask,” Said Bristol, drawling, “But don’t ask me, For any facts of the jamboree. I reckon we’ve been to an Irish wake Or maybe cuttin’ a johnny-cake With most of the Union cavalry-corps. I don’t know yet, but it was a war. Are you crazy still? You were for a piece. You yelled you were Destiny’s long-lost niece And wanted to charge the whole Yank line Because they’d stolen your valentine. You fought like a fool but you talked right wild. You got a bad bump, too.” Wingate smiled “I reckon I did, but I don’t know when. Did we win or what?” “And I say again,” Said Bristol, heavily, “don’t ask me. Inquire of General Robert Lee. I know we’re in for a long night ride And they say we got whipped on the other side. What’s left of the Troop are down by the road. We lost John Leicester and Harry Spode And the Lawley boys and Ballantyne. The Major’s all right—but there’s Jim Devine And Francis Carroll and Judson White— I wish I had some liquor tonight.”

Wingate touched the cut on his head. It burned, but it no longer bled. “I wish I could sleep ten years,” he said.

The night of the third day falls. The battle is done. Lee entrenches that night upon Seminary Ridge. All next day the battered armies still face each other Like enchanted beasts. Lee thinks he may be attacked, Hopes for it, perhaps, is not, and prepares his retreat.

Vicksburg has fallen, hollow Vicksburg has fallen, The cavedwellers creep from their caves and blink at the sun. The pan of the Southern balance goes down and down. The cotton is withering.

Army of Northern Virginia, haggard and tattered, Tramping back on the pikes, through the dust-white summer, With your wounds still fresh, your burden of prisoners, Your burden of sick and wounded, “One long groan of human anguish six miles long.” You reach the swollen Potomac at long last, A foe behind, a risen river in front, And fording that swollen river, in the dim starlight, In the yellow and early dawn, Still have heart enough for the tall, long-striding soldiers To mock the short, half swept away by the stream. “Better change our name to Lee’s Waders, boys!” “Come on you shorty—get a ride on my back.” “Aw, it’s just we ain’t had a bath in seven years And General Lee, he knows we need a good bath.”

So you splash and slip through the water and come at last Safe, to the Southern side, while Meade does not strike; Safe to take other roads, safe to march upon roads you know For two long years. And yet—each road that you take, Each dusty road leads to Appomattox now.