Shoulders galled already by their new guns,
—They were three-months’ men, they had drilled in civilian clothes
Till a week ago—“There’s Charlie! There’s Hank, yeah, yeah!”
“On to Richmond, boys! Three cheers for Abe Lincoln!
Three cheers for the boys! Three groans for old Jeff Davis
And the dirty Rebs!”
“We’ll hang Jeff Davis on a sour-apple tree!”
Jack Ellyat, marching, saw between blue shoulders
A blur of faces. They all were faces he knew,
Old Mrs. Cobb with her wart and her Paisley shawl,
Little George Freeman, the slim Tucker girls,
All of them cheering and shouting—and all of them strange
Suddenly, different, faces he’d never seen.
Faces somehow turned into one crowd-face.
His legs went marching along all right but they felt
Like somebody else’s legs, his mind was sucked dry.
It was real, they were going away, the town was cheering them.
Henry Fairfield was marching ahead with his sword.
Just as he’d thought about it a thousand times,
These months—but it wasn’t the way that he’d thought about it.
“On to Richmond! On to Richmond! On to Richmond!”
There were Mother and Father and Jane and the house.
Jane was waving a flag. He laughed and called to them.
But his voice was stiff in his throat, not like his real voice.
This, everything, it was too quick, too crowded, not Phaëton
Charging his snarling horses at a black sea,
But a numb, hurried minute with legs that marched
Mechanically, feeling nothing at all.
The white crowd-face—the sweat on the red seamed neck
Of the man ahead—“On to Richmond!”—blue shoulders bobbing—
Flags—cheering—somebody kissed him—Ellen Baker—
She was crying—wet mouth of tears—didn’t want her to kiss him—
Why did she want to—the station—halt—Mother and Jane.
The engineer were a flag in his coat-lapel.
The engine had “On to Richmond!” chalked all over it.
Nothing to say now—Mother looks tired to death—
I wish I weren’t going—no, I’m glad that I am—
The damn band’s playing “John Brown’s Body” again,
I wish they’d stop it!—I wish to God we could start—
There—close up, men!—oh my God, they’ve let Ned out!
I told them for God’s sake to lock him up in the cellar,
But they’ve let him out—maybe he got out by himself—
He’s got too much sense—“No, down, Ned! Down, good dog!
Down, I tell you!—” “Goodbye, boys! Goodbye! We’ll hang Jeff Davis!”
The engine squealed, the packed train started to move.
Ned wanted to come, but they wouldn’t let him come.
They had to kick him away, he couldn’t see why.
In another column, footsore Curly Hatton
Groaned at the thought of marching any more.
His legs weren’t built for marching and they knew it,
Butterball-legs under a butterball-body.
The plump good-tempered face with its round eyes
Blue and astonished as a china-doll’s,
Stared at the road ahead and hated it
Because there was so much of it ahead
And all of it so dry. He didn’t mind
The rest so much. He didn’t even mind
Being the one sure necessary joke
Of the whole regiment. He’d always been
A necessary joke—fat people were.
Fat babies always were supposed to laugh.
Fat little boys had fingers poked at them.
And, even with the road, and being fat,
You had a good time in this funny war,
Considering everything, and one thing most.
His mind slipped back two months. He saw himself
In the cool room at Weatherby’s Retreat
Where all the girls were sewing the new star
In the new flag for the first volunteers.
He hadn’t thought of fighting much before,
He was too easy-going. If Virginia
Wanted secession, that was her affair.
It seemed too bad to break the Union up
After some seventy years of housekeeping.
But he could understand the way you’d feel
If you were thin and angry at the Yanks.
He knew a lot of Yankees that he liked,
But then he liked most people, on the whole
Although most girls and women made him shy.
He loved the look of them and the way they walked,
He loved their voices and their little sweet mouths,
But something always seemed to hold him back,
When he was near them. He was too fat, too friendly,
Too comfortable for dreams, too easy-shy.
The porcelain dolls stood on the mantelpiece,
Waiting such slim and arrant cavaliers
As porcelain dolls must have to make them proud,
They had no mercy for fat Cupidons,
Not even Lucy, all the years before,
And Lucy was the porcelain belle of the world!
And so when she said. And he couldn’t believe
At first. But she was silver and fire and steel
That day of the new stars and the new flag,
Fire and bright steel for the invading horde
And silver for the men who drove them off,
And so she sewed him in her flag and heart:
Though even now, he couldn’t believe she had
In spite of all the letters and the socks
And kissing him before he went away.
But it was so—the necessary joke
Made into a man at last, a man in love
And loved by the most porcelain belle of the world.
And he was ready to march to the world’s end
And fight ten million Yanks to keep it so.
“Oh God, after we’re married—the cool night
Over the garden—and Lucy sitting there
In her blue dress while the big stars come out.”
His face was funny with love and footsore pride,
The man beside him saw it, gave a laugh,
“Curly’s thinking it’s time for a julep, boys!
Hot work for fat men, Curly!”
The crows fly over the Henry House, through the red sky of evening, cawing,
Judith Henry, bedridden, watches them through the clouded glass of old sight.
(July is hot in Virginia—a parched, sun-leathered farmer sawing
Dry sticks with a cicada-saw that creaks all the lukewarm night.)
But Judith Henry’s hands are cool in spite of all midsummer’s burning,
Cool, muted and frail with age like the smoothness of old yellow linen, the cool touch of old, dulled rings.
Her years go past her in bed like falling waters and the waters of a millwheel turning,
And she is not ill content to lie there, dozing and calm, remembering youth, to the gushing of those watersprings.
She has known Time like the cock of red dawn and Time like a tired clock slowing;
She has seen so many faces and bodies, young and then old, so much life, so many patterns of death and birth.
She knows that she must leave them soon. She is not afraid to flow with that river’s flowing.
But the wrinkled earth still hangs at her sufficed breast like a weary child,
