Judith Henry, Judith Henry, your body…

Judith Henry, Judith Henry, your body has born its ghost at last, there are no more pictures of peace or terror left in the broken machine of the brain that was such a cunning picture-maker: Terrified ghost, so rudely dishoused by such casual violence, be at rest; there are others dishoused in this falling night, the falling night is a sack of darkness, indifferent as Saturn to wars or generals, indifferent to shame or victory. War is a while but peace is a while and soon enough the earth-colored hands of the earth-workers will scoop the last buried shells and the last clotted bullet-slag from the racked embittered acre, And the rustling visitors drive out fair Sundays to look at the monument near the rebuilt house, buy picture postcards and wonder dimly what you were like when you lived and what you thought when you knew you were going to die.

Wingate felt a frog in his throat As he patted Black Whistle’s reeking coat And reined him in for a minute’s breath. He was hot as the devil and tired to death, And both were glad for the sun in the West And a panting second of utter rest, While Wingate’s mind went patching together Like a cobbler piecing out scraps of leather The broken glimmers of what they’d done Since the sun in the West was a rising sun. The long, bored hours of shiftless waiting And that single instant of pure, fierce hating When the charge came down like a cataract On a long blue beach of broken sand And Thought was nothing but all was Act And the sabre seemed to master the hand.

Wainscott Bristol, a raging terrier Killing the Yankee that shot Phil Ferrier With a cut that spattered the bloody brains Over his saddle and bridle-reins, One Cotter cursing, the other praying, And both of them slashing like scythes of slaying, Stuart Cazenove singing “Lord Randall” And Howard Brooke as white as a candle, While Father fought like a fiend in satin, And killed as he quoted tag-ends of Latin, The prisoners with their sick, dazed wonder And the mouths of children caught in a blunder And over it all, the guns, the thunder, The pace, the being willing to die, The stinging color of victory.

He remembered it all like a harsh, tense dream. It had a color. It had a gleam. But he had outridden and lost the rest And he was alone with the bloody West And a trampled road, and a black hill-crest.

The road and the bushes all about Were cluttered with relics of Yankee rout, Haversacks spilling their shirts and socks, A burst canteen and a cartridge-box. Rifles and cups trampled underfoot, A woman’s locket, a slashed black boot Stained and oozing along the slash And a ripe pear crushed to a yellow mash. Who had carried the locket and munched the pear, And why was a dead cat lying there, Stark and grinning, a furry sack, With a red flannel tongue and a broken back? You didn’t fight wars with a tabby-cat. … He found he was telling the Yankees that, They couldn’t hear him of course, but still … He shut his eyes for a minute until He felt less dizzy. There, that was better, And the evening wind was chilly and keen— —He’d have to write Mother some sort of letter— —He’d promised Amanda a Yank canteen, But he didn’t feel like getting it here, Where that dead cat snickered from ear to ear—

Back in the pinewoods, clear and far, A bugle sang like a falling star. He shivered, turned Black Whistle around And galloped hastily toward the sound.

Curly Hatton opened his eyes again. A minute ago he had been marching, marching, Forever up and down enormous hills While his throat scratched with thirst and something howled— But then there was a clear minute—and he was lying In a long, crowded, strangely-churchly gloom Where lanterns bobbed like marshlights in a swamp And there was a perpetual rustling noise Of dry leaves stirred by a complaining wind. No, they were only voices of wounded men. “Water. Water. Water. Water. Water.” He heard the rain on the roof and sucked his lips. “Water. Water. Water. Water. Water.” Oh, heavy sluices of dark, sweet, Summer rain, Pour down on me and wash me free again, Cleanse me of battles, make my flesh smell sweet, I am so sick of thirst, so tired of pain, So stale with wounds and the heat! Somebody went by, a doctor with red sleeves; He stared at the red sleeves and tried to speak But when he spoke, he whispered. This was a church. He could see a dim altar now and a shadow-pulpit. He was wounded. They had put the wounded men in a church. Lucy’s face came to him a minute and then dissolved, A drowned face, ebbing away with a smile on its mouth. He had meant to marry that face in another church. But he was dying instead. It was strange to die.

All night from the hour of three, the dead man’s hour, the rain falls in heavy gusts, in black irresistible streams as if the whole sky were falling in one wet huddle. All night, living and dead sleep under it, without moving, on the field; the surgeons work in the church; the wounded moan; the dissevered fragments of companies and regiments look for each other, trying to come together. In the morning, when the burial-parties go out, the rain is still falling, damping the powder of the three rounds fired over the grave; before the grave is well-dug, the bottom of the grave is a puddle. All day long the Southern armies bury their dead to the sodden drums of the rain; all day the bugle calls a hoarse-throated “Taps”; the bugler lets the water run from his bugle-mouth and wipes it clean again and curses the rainy weather.

All night the Union army fled in retreat Like horses scared by a shadow—a stumbling flood Of panicky men who had been brave for a while And might be brave again on another day But now were merely children chased by the night And each man tainting his neighbor with the same Blind fear. When men or horses begin to run Like that, they keep on running till they tire out Unless a strong hand masters a bridle-rein. Here there was no hand to master, no rein to clutch, Where the riderless horses kicked their way through the crowd And the congressmen’s carriages choked Cat Hairpin Bend. Sykes and the regulars covered the retreat, And a few was kept in some sort of order, But the rest—They tried to stop them at Centerville. McDowell and his tired staff held a haggard conference. But before the officers could order retreat The men were walking away. They had fought and lost. They were going to Washington, they were going back To their tents and their cooking-fires and their letters from Susie. They were going back home to Maine or Vermont or Ohio, And they didn’t care who knew it, and that was that.

Meanwhile, on the battlefield, Johnston and Beauregard, Now joined by the dusty Davis, found themselves As dazed by their victory as their foes by defeat. They had beaten one armed mob with another armed mob And Washington was theirs for the simple act Of stretching a hand to the apple up on the bough, If they had known. But they could not know it then. They too saw spectres—unbroken Union reserves Moving to cut their supply-line near Manassas. They called back the pursuit, such scattered pursuit as it was. Their men were tired and disordered. The chance went by While only the stiff-necked Jackson saw it clear As a fighting-psalm or a phrase in Napoleon’s tactics. He said to the surgeon who was binding his wound, With a taciturn snap, “Give me ten thousand fresh troops And I will be in Washington by tomorrow.” But they could not give him the troops while there yet was time. He had three days’ rations cooked for the Stonewall Brigade And dourly awaited the order that never came. He had always been at God’s orders, and God had used him As an instrument in winning a certain fight. Now, if God saw fit to give him the men and guns, He would take Washington for the glory of God. If He didn’t, it was God’s will and not to be questioned.

Meanwhile he could while the hours of waiting away By seeing the Stonewall Brigade was properly fed, Endeavoring, with that rigid kindness of his To show Imboden his error in using profanity —In the heat of battle many things might be excused, But nothing excused profanity, even then— And writing his Pastor at Lexington a letter Enclosing that check for the colored Sunday-school Which he’d promised, and, being busy, had failed to send. There is not one word of Bull Run in all that letter Except the mention of “a fatiguing day’s service.” It would not have occurred to Jackson there might have been.