Beyond the soldiers lay the open fields
Earth-colored, sleepy with unfallen frost.
The farmer’s eye took in the bountiful land.
“This is a beautiful country,” said John Brown.
The gallows-stairs were climbed, the death-cap fitted.
Behind the gallows,
Before a line of red-and-grey cadets,
A certain odd Professor T. J. Jackson
Watched disapprovingly the ragged militia
Deploy for twelve long minutes ere they reached
Their destined places.
The Presbyterian sabre of his soul
Was moved by a fey breath. He saw John Brown,
A tiny blackened scrap of paper-soul
Fluttering above the Pit that Calvin barred
With bolts of iron on the unelect;
He heard the just, implacable Voice speak out
“Depart ye wicked to eternal fire.”
And sternly prayed that God might yet be moved
To save the predestined cinder from the flame.
Brown did not hear the prayer. The rough black cloth
Of the death-cap hid his eyes now. He had seen
The Blue Ridge Mountains couched in their blue haze.
Perhaps he saw them still, behind his eyes—
Perhaps just cloth, perhaps nothing any more.
“I shall look unto the hills from whence cometh my help.”
The hatchet cut the cord. The greased trap fell.
Colonel Preston:
“So perish all such enemies of Virginia,
All such enemies of the Union,
All such foes of the human race.”
John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave.
He will not come again with foolish pikes
And a pack of desperate boys to shadow the sun.
He has gone back North. The slaves have forgotten his eyes.
John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave.
John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave.
Already the corpse is changed, under the stone,
The strong flesh rotten, the bones dropping away.
Cotton will grow next year, in spite of the skull.
Slaves will be slaves next year, in spite of the bones.
Nothing is changed, John Brown, nothing is changed.
“There is a song in my bones. There is a song
In my white bones.”
I hear no song. I hear
Only the blunt seeds growing secretly
In the dark entrails of the preparate earth,
The rustle of the cricket under the leaf,
The creaking of the cold wheel of the stars.
“Bind my white bones together—hollow them
To skeleton pipes of music. When the wind
Blows from the budded Spring, the song will blow.”
I hear no song. I only hear the roar
Of the Spring freshets, and the gushing voice
Of mountain-brooks that overflow their banks,
Swollen with melting ice and crumbled earth.
“That is my song.
It is made of water and wind. It marches on.”
No, John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering,
A-mouldering.
“My bones have been washed clean
And God blows through them with a hollow sound,
And God has shut his wildfire in my dead heart.”
I hear it now,
Faint, faint as the first droning flies of March,
Faint as the multitudinous, tiny sigh
Of grasses underneath a windy scythe.
“It will grow stronger.”
It has grown stronger. It is marching on.
It is a throbbing pulse, a pouring surf,
It is the rainy gong of the Spring sky
Echoing,
John Brown’s body,
John Brown’s body.
But still it is not fierce. I find it still
More sorrowful than fierce.
“You have not heard it yet. You have not heard
The ghosts that walk in it, the shaking sound.”
Strong medicine,
Bitter medicine of the dead,
I drink you now. I hear the unloosed thing,
The anger of the ripe wheat—the ripened earth
Sullenly quaking like a beaten drum
From Kansas to Vermont. I hear the stamp
Of the ghost-feet. I hear the ascending sea.
“Glory, Glory Hallelujah,
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah,
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!”
What is this agony of the marching dust?
What are these years ground into hatchet blades?
“Ask the tide why it rises with the moon,
My bones and I have risen like that tide
And an immortal anguish plucks us up
And will not hide us till our song is done.”
The phantom drum diminishes—the year
Rolls back. It is only winter still, not spring,
The snow still flings its white on the new grave,
Nothing is changed, John Brown, nothing is changed
John … Brown …
Book II
A smoke-stained Stars-and-Stripes droops from a broken toothpick and ninety tired men march out of fallen Sumter to their ships, drums rattling and colors flying.
Their faces are worn and angry, their bellies empty and cold, but the stubborn salute of a gun, fifty times repeated, keeps their backs straight as they march out, and answers something stubborn and mute in their flesh.
Beauregard, beau sabreur, hussar-sword with the gilded hilt, the gilded metal of the guard twisted into lovelocks and roses, vain as Murat, dashing as Murat, Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard is a pose of conquering courtesy under a palmetto-banner. The lugubrious little march goes grimly by his courtesy, he watches it unsmiling, a light half-real, half that of invisible footlights on his French, dark, handsome face.
The stone falls in the pool, the ripples spread.
The colt in the Long Meadow kicked up his heels.
“That was a fly,” he thought, “It’s early for flies.”
But being alive, in April, was too fine
For flies or anything else to bother a colt.
He kicked up his heels again, this time in pure joy,
And started to run a race with the wind and his shadow.
After the stable stuffiness, the sun.
After the straw-littered boards, the squelch of the turf.
His little hoofs felt lighter than dancing-shoes,
He scared himself with a blue-jay, his heart was a leaf.
He was pure joy in action, he was the unvexed
Delight of all moving lightness and swift-footed pace,
The pride of the flesh, the young Spring neighing and rearing.
Sally Dupré called to him from the fence.
He came like a charge in a spatter of clean-cut clods,
Ears back, eyes wide and wild with folly and youth.
He drew up snorting. She laughed and brushed at her skirt
Where the mud had splashed it. “There, Star—there, silly boy!
Why won’t you ever learn sense?” But her eyes were hot,
Her hands were shaking as she offered the sugar
—Long-fingered, appleblossom-shadow hands—
Star blew at the sugar once, then mumbled it up.
She patted the pink nose. “There, silly Star!
That’s for Fort Sumter, Star!” How hot her eyes were!
“Star, do you know you’re a Confederate horse?
Do you know I’m going to call you Beauregard?”
Star whinnied, and asked for more sugar. She put her hand
On his neck for a moment that matched the new green leaves
And sticky buds of April. You
