Joaquin Miller's Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

The dying land cried; they heard her death-call,
These bent old men stopped, listened intent;
Then rusty old muskets rushed down from the wall,
And squirrel-guns gleamed in that regiment,
And grandsires marched, old muskets in hand—
The last men left in the old Southland.

The gray grandsires! They were seen to reel,
Their rusty old muskets a wearisome load;
They marched, scarce tall as the cannon's wheel,
Marched stooping on up the corduroy road;
These gray old boys, all broken and bent,
Marched out, the gallant last regiment.

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But oh! that march through the cypress trees,
When zest and excitement had died away!
That desolate march through the marsh to the knees—
The gray moss mantling the battered and gray—
These gray grandsires all broken and bent—
The gray moss mantling the regiment.

The gray bent men and the mosses gray;
The dull dead gray of the uniform!
The dull dead skies, like to lead that day,
Dull, dead, heavy and deathly warm!
Oh, what meant more than the cypress meant,
With its mournful moss, to that regiment?

That deadly march through the marshes deep!
That sultry day and the deeds in vain!
The rest on the cypress roots, the sleep—
The sleeping never to rise again!
The rust on the guns; the rust and the rent—
That dying and desolate regiment!

The muskets left leaning against the trees,
The cannon-wheels clogged from the moss o'erhead,
The cypress trees bending on obstinate knees
As gray men kneeling by the gray men dead!
A lone bird rising, long legged and gray,
Slow rising and rising and drifting away.

The dank dead mosses gave back no sound,
The drums lay silent as the drummers there;
The sultry stillness it was so profound
You might have heard an unuttered prayer;

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And ever and ever and far away,
Kept drifting that desolate bird in gray.

The long gray shrouds of that cypress wood,
Like vails that sweep where the gray nuns weep—
That cypress moss o'er the dankness deep,
Why, the cypress roots they were running blood;
And to right and to left lay an old man dead—
A mourning cypress set foot and head.

'Twas man hunting men in the wilderness there;
'Twas man hunting man and hunting to slay,
But nothing was found but death that day,
And possibly God—and that bird in gray
Slow rising and rising and drifting away.

Now down in the swamp where the gray men fell
The fireflies volley and volley at night,
And black men belated are heard to tell
Of the ghosts in gray in a mimic fight—
Of the ghosts of the gallant old men in gray
Who silently died in the swamp that day.

In a pretty little village of Louisiana destroyed by shells toward the end of the war, on a bayou back from the river, a great number of very old men had been left by their sons and grandsons, while they went to the war. And these old men, many of them veterans of other wars, formed themselves into a regiment, made for themselves uniforms, picked up old flintlock guns, even mounted a rusty old cannon, and so prepared to go to battle if ever the war came within their reach. Toward the close of the war some gunboats came down the river shelling the shore. The old men heard the firing, and, gathering together, they set out with their old muskets and rusty old cannon to try to reach the river over the corduroy road through the cypress swamp. They marched out right merrily that hot day, shouting and bantering to encourage each other, the dim fires of their old eyes burning with desire of battle, although not one of them was young enough to stand erect. And they never came back any more. The shells from the gunboats set the dense and sultry woods on fire. The old men were shut in by the flames—the gray beards and the gray moss and the gray smoke together.