FullReads

Saying, “Gal, you’re looking shaky; have a drop of old Jamaiky;
I’m afeard there’ll be more trouble afore the job is done;”
So I took one scorching swallow; dreadful faint I felt and hollow,
Standing there from early morning when the firing was begun.

All through those hours of trial I had watched a calm clock dial,
As the hands kept creeping, creeping,–they were creeping round to four,
When the old man said, “They’re forming with their bagonets fixed for storming:
It’s the death-grip that’s a-coming,–they will try the works once more.”

With brazen trumpets blaring, the flames behind them glaring,
The deadly wall before them, in close array they come;
Still onward, upward toiling, like a dragon’s fold uncoiling,–
Like the rattlesnake’s shrill warning the reverberating drum!

Over heaps all torn and gory–shall I tell the fearful story,
How they surged above the breast-work, as a sea breaks over a deck;
How, driven, yet scarce defeated, our worn-out men retreated,
With their powder-horns all emptied, like the swimmers from a wreck?

It has all been told and painted; as for me, they say I fainted,
And the wooden-legged old Corporal stumped with me down the stair:
When I woke from dreams affrighted the evening lamps were lighted,–
On the floor a youth was lying; his bleeding breast was bare.

And I heard through all the flurry, “Send for WARREN! hurry! hurry!
Tell him here’s a soldier bleeding, and he’ll come and dress his wound!”
Ah, we knew not till the morrow told its tale of death and sorrow,
How the starlight found him stiffened on the dark and bloody ground.

Who the youth was, what his name was, where the place from which he came was,
Who had brought him from the battle, and had left him at our door,
He could not speak to tell us; but ‘t was one of our brave fellows,
As the homespun plainly showed us which the dying soldier wore.

For they all thought he was dying, as they gathered round him crying,–
And they said, “Oh, how they’ll miss him!” and “What will his mother do?”
Then, his eyelids just unclosing like a child’s that has been dozing,
He faintly murmured, “Mother!”–and–I saw his eyes were blue.

“Why, grandma, how you’re winking!” Ah, my child, it sets me thinking
Of a story not like this one. Well, he somehow lived along;
So we came to know each other, and I nursed him like a–mother,
Till at last he stood before me, tall, and rosy-cheeked, and strong.

And we sometimes walked together in the pleasant summer weather,
–“Please to tell us what his name was?” Just your own, my little dear,–
There’s his picture Copley painted: we became so well acquainted,
That–in short, that’s why I’m grandma, and you children all are here!