Light brown hair streaked with grey feathers, blue claymore eyes
That get steel shadows in battle, a face like Hamilton’s,
Old Westpointer, old cavalry-colonel, well-schooled in war.
Lincoln offered to make him a major-general
And rumor says that he could have had the command
Of the Union armies, once. But he resigned
And later, went with his State. It is hard to say
What he might have been. They called him the “preux chevalier”
At times, as they called and were to call many others
With that Waverley-streak that was so strong in the South.
They also called him one of Davis’s pets,
One of the tin Westpointers that Davis favored
Above good politicians and courtesy colonels.
The Richmond Enquirer didn’t think so much of him,
His soldiers thought rather more. Only this can be said.
He caught Grant napping in some strange flaw of skill
Which happened once and did not happen again.
And drove his unprepared, unwatchful brigades
Back almost into the river. And in the heat
Of seeing his lines go forward, he bled to death
From a wound that should not have been mortal. After which,
While the broken Union stragglers under the bluff
Were still howling that they were beaten, Buell came up,
Lew Wallace came up, the knife half-sunk in the wound
Was not thrust home, the night fell, the battle lagged.
The bulldog got the bone in his teeth again
And next day, reinforced, beat Beauregard back
And counted a Union victory. In the books
Both sides claim victory on one day or the other
And both claims seem valid enough. It only remains
To take the verdict of the various dead
In this somewhat indecisive meeting of blocks.
There were thirty-five hundred dead when the blocks had met.
But, being dead, their verdict is out of court.
They cannot puzzle the books with their testimony.
Now, though, it is only the evening before the day.
Johnston and Beauregard meet with their corps-commanders
By the wagon-cut Pittsburg road. The march has been slow.
The marching men have been noisy and hard to manage.
By every rule of war, Grant must have been warned
Long before now, and is planning an ambush for them.
They are being marched into an open Union trap.
So Beauregard thinks and says—and is perfectly right
According to rules. There is only one difficulty.
There is no ambush. Sherman has just reported
The presence of enemy troops in front of his lines
But says he expects nothing more than some picket-firing
And Grant that evening telegraphs General Halleck,
“I have scarcely the faintest idea of an attack.”
So much for the generals. Beauregard makes his point
And is overruled. The April night comes down.
The butternut men try to get some sleep while they can.
They are to be up and fighting by five in the morning.
Jack Ellyat, least of any, expected attack.
He woke about five with a dazzle struck in his eyes
Where a long dawn-ray slid through a crack in the tent.
He cursed at the ray and tried to go back to sleep
But he couldn’t do it, although he was tired enough,
Something ate at his mind as soon as he wakened
And kept on eating. This morning was Sunday morning.
The bells would be jangling for church back home, pretty soon,
The girls would be going to church in white Sunday dresses,
No, it was too early for that—they’d be muffled up
In coats and galoshes. Their cheeks would be pink as apples.
He wanted to see a girl who washed her hair,
Not a flat old woman sucking a yellow snuffstick
Or one of the girls in the dirty blue silk wrappers
With flags on their garters. He wanted to see a girl.
He wondered idly about the flags on the garters.
Did they change them to Rebel flags when the Rebels came?
Some poor whore down the river had had herself
Tattoed with a Secesh flag. She was patriotic.
She cried so hard when the Union troops were landed
That the madam had to hide her down in the cellar.
He must be bad to be thinking of things like that
On Sunday morning. He’d better go to church
If they had any kind of church, and make up for it—
O frosty churchbells jangling across the thin
Crust of packed frost, under Connecticut sky,
Put snow on my tongue, and the grey, cool flower of rain—
He had to get up. He couldn’t lie here and listen
To Bailey and the rest of them, snoring away.
His throat was dry. He needed a drink of water
But not from a muddy river—put rain on my tongue!
Souse me with chilly, sweet flaws of Puritan rain—
He started to put on his boots, looking over at Bailey.
Bailey was bearded, Bailey was thirty-two,
Bailey had been a teamster and was a corporal.
The waking Bailey looked like a stupid horse,
The sleeping Bailey looked like a dirty sack,
Bailey called him “Colonel” and didn’t mean it,
Bailey had had him tossed in a blanket once,
Bailey had told the tale of the tattooed whore,
Somehow he hated Bailey worse than the rest.
He managed to leave the tent without waking Bailey.
It was very early still. The sun was just up.
A fair sky, a very fair day. The air still held
That bloom which is not the bloom on apple or peach
But the bloom on a fruit made up of pure water and light,
The freshness of dawn, still trembling, being new-born.
He sucked at it gratefully. The camp was asleep.
All that length of tents still asleep. He could see through the tents.
He could see all those sleeping, rough, lousy, detested men
Laden with sleep as with soft leaden burdens laden,
Movelessly lying between the brown fawns of sleep
Like infants nuzzled against the flanks of a doe,
In quietness slumbering, in a warm quietness,
While sleep looked at them with her fawn’s agate eyes
And would not wake them yet. And he was alone,
And for a moment, could see this, and see them so
And, being free, stand alone, and so being free
To love or hate, do neither, but merely stand
Above them like sleep and see them with untouched eyes.
In a while they would wake, and he would hate them again.
But now he was asleep. He was the sun on the coat
Of the halted fawn at the green edge of the wood
Staring at morning. He could not hate them yet.
Somebody near by, in
