University of Virginia Library

Come here, old fellow, let us sit and talk.—
What think you of the landscape there below,
My field of battle?—Was it worth the walk?—
What?—growling?—Do you mean to tell me No?
—Look at our cabin now, the sunset flecks!—
Does it not seem to smile at us?—Its glow
Is as if joy dwelt there of long ago,
And not the misery of two old wrecks.
From some quite different time, the good old past,
When happiness housed in it, unconcealed,
And round it flowed the blessings of the field,
It got that happy look it still holds fast.
You know how once you raced the rabbit here,
Or watched the sheep; or home the cows would bring;
Stopping a moment there beside the spring,
While from the grain the bob-white's cry rose clear?
There went the path through meadows, dewy bright,
That to the lover said, “I am the way,
The very shortest, to your love to-night.
Come, follow me, and clasp your heart's delight.”
The cornfield's billows there no longer sway;
Weeds and the briar usurp their place of plumes;
No orchard now within that valley blooms
Or bears ripe fruit, where those old boughs decay,
And death with barren hand the hillside grips:
Our path has nothing more of love to tell,
And grimly closes tight its grassy lips;
While over all oblivion lays its spell.
Only our cabin with its pear tree seems
Glad, unawakened from its oldtime dreams.
'T is like the land on yonder side our heath:
Though long ago joy vanished from its arms,
Still with a gown of flowers it decks its charms,
Adorns its brow with love's perennial wreath.
True to the old, already mindless of
The war that swept it, yearly it wears its roses.
In that small place to live is good enough,
So snugly cabined, quaint 'mid blossoming closes.
There one can talk with every wind that blows,
And with the neighborly rain that comes at night;
And there one may look up and greet the light,
And take the first and last kiss she bestows.
When night weds star to star with ray on ray,
And you, my old hound, to the round moon bay,
How good it is to lie there, looking out,
Marking what she, the pale moon, is about,
With her white stealth; and, gliding silvery wan,
To watch her towards our slumbering cabin creep,
Trying with ghostly fingers until dawn
To rob it, through that window, of its sleep. ...
Get up, old fellow; we are rested now.
Let's move about. 'T will help us talk somehow.

Where was I?—Oh!—Why, up there with the moon
Waiting your bay.—But, see you! where they gather,
Whose limbs were cannon-food long since? or rather
War's vintage.—Look, now, where they march afar
In lines of sunset, settling on yon dune
Where batteries bloomed once, star on crimson star,
Oblations on the altar-stone of war.
Altar?—old dog!—No! slaughter-house and furnace
Of Hell was this same field: a red Avernus
Of thunder and of flame and bugle-call ...
There where that banner of mist streams over all,
Look! look! the charge! the phantom plunge and fall
Of bayonet lines of hurtling horse and men. ...
All silent now, at peace there in the grave,
Foe side by side with foeman; coward and brave;
Rent limbs and bodies; broken hearts of mothers
And lovers, too; all silent.—God be praised!
'T is past and done with, holocaust and all,
And what we saw there was a spectre raised
Of fancy merely, thinking on the fall
Of our Confederacy.—How natural
It seemed at first; but now the scene's erased.—
What does it matter? we're aristocrats
Still, my good fellow, spite of all the shame
Of that defeat. We may be poor as rats,
But we are proud, though mutilated, lame. ...
Of my poor body I have given a member
To that lost Cause. ... You will forgive me, even
If I do mention it. But now, by Heaven!
I have to speak of things which I remember:
For instance ... no; you will not take it ill—
You know the little grave there on the hill?—
Her grave, old boy: you will remember Nellie,—
My sweetheart and your playmate of that past
You hate to hear of,—who shall haunt me till
This hollow drum, my heart, beats its reveille,
Its final challenge; and 't is taps at last
For all my dreams—dust on the whirling blast.

You think me bitter. But it's hard each day
To smile and lie when o'er the heart the harrow
Of loss has gone; it irks one to the marrow
When there is no one left to smooth away
The grief of old misfortune; or delay
Regret, whose burden is remembered pain,
And that despair which says “All—hope—is—vain.”
If you were only human, and could draw
A little nearer, I might tell you more,
Old dog: but if you have a bone to gnaw
You are contented: well may you ignore
Regrets and memories that naught restore.—
When dogs remember, now, I ask you whether
'T is joy or grief they feel, or both together?—
Ah, my old friend, you sympathize, I know;
I see it in your eyes; whose sadness flatters;
And till the news far as our village scatters,
There, of my death, I hope to keep you so:
And while we have each other nothing matters.

The night draws on. Look how the gray mist flies,
Wind-hunted of the Autumn overhead—
Or is it some dim army of the dead
In wild retreat, filling the heavens with dread?
Hark! what is that? a bugle blast that dies?—
Or wild-fowl honking South through starless skies?—
I read their message—winter and hard times. ...
The evil genius of the place again
Plays black tricks with the mind, devising crimes:
And though I flee it, it is all in vain:
Through bush and briar it follows, dark, deriding:—
“O fool,” it cries, “with all your doubts and fears,
What! have you lived these many loveless years,
And found no cure yet for the curse of tears?”—
And all my wounds, with that, break from their hiding.—
(As through a village, with vile gibes and screams,
Scorn taunts a fool on, wrapped in foolish dreams,
So, jeering, through the dark it follows ever.)—

This will not do. With my one leg we'll never
Get home to-night. Something has gone amiss
In me, I fear, old dog. I feel almost
As if we two were lost, were utterly lost. ...
We must get home; get home; where firelight is—
Firelight and comfort, that shall lay this ghost.