And washed its hands in a rainy dream,
Till the stirrup-strap and the horses’ steam
And Shepley and Bristol behind his back,
Playing piquet with a dog-eared pack
And the hiss of the sap in the smoky wood
Mixed for a moment in something good,
Something outside of peace or war
Or a fair girl wearing a silver star,
Something hardly as vain as pride
And gaunt as the men he rode beside.
It made no comments but it was there,
Real as the color of Lucy’s hair
Or the taste of Henry Weatherby’s wine.
He thought “These people are friends of mine.
And we certainly fooled the Yanks last week,
When we caught those wagons at Boiling Creek,
I guess we’re not such a bad patrol
If we never get straight with the muster-roll,
I guess, next Spring, we can do it again—”
Bristol threw down a flyspecked ten,
“Theah,” he said, in the soft, sweet drawl
That could turn as hard as a Minie-ball,
“This heah day is my lucky day,
And Shepley nevah could play piquet.”
He stretched his arms in a giant yawn,
“Gentlemen, when are we movin’ on?
I have no desire for a soldier’s end,
While I still have winnin’s that I can spend
And they’s certain appointments with certain ladies
Which I’d miss right smart if I went to Hades,
Especially one little black-eyed charmer
Whose virtue, one hopes, is her only armor.
So if Sergeant Wingate’s mended his saddle
I suggest that we all of us now skedaddle,
To employ a term that the Yankees favor—”
He tasted his words, for he liked the flavor.
“And yet, one dreads to be back,” said he,
“One knows how tippled one well may be
If one meets with the oppor-tun-ity.
And even the charmers can likewise raise
Unpleasant doubts that may last for days—
And as one,” he sighed, “of our martial lads,
I’d rather be chargin’ Columbiads,
Than actin’ sweet to some old smooth-bore
When he tells me how he could win the War
By burnin’ the next Yank crossroads-store.
The Yanks aren’t always too blame polite,
But they fight like sin when they’ve got to fight,
And after they’ve almost nailed your hide
To your stinkin’ saddle in some ole ride,
It makes you mad when some nice home-guard
Tells you they nevah could combat hard.
I have no desire to complain or trouble
But I’d find this conflict as comfortable
As a big green pond for a duck to swim in,
If it wasn’t for leave, and the lovin’ women.”
The snow lay hard on the hills. You could burn your eyes
By too-long-looking into the cold ice-lens
Of infinite, pure, glittering, winter air.
It was as cold as that, as sparkling as that,
Where the crystal trees stood up like strange, brittle toys
After the sleet storm passed, till the setting sun
Hung the glass boughs with rainbows frozen to gems
And the long blue shadows pooled in the still hill-hollows.
The white and the purple lilacs of New England
Are frozen long, they will not bloom till the rains,
But when you look from the window, you see them there,
A great field of white lilacs. A gathered sheaf
Of palest blossoms of lilac, stained with the purple evening.
Jack Ellyat turned away from the window now,
The frosty sleighbell of winter was in his ears,
He saw the new year, a child in a buffalo-robe,
Dragged in a sleigh whose runners were polished steel
Up the long hill of February, into chill light.
The child slept in the robe like a reindeer-colt,
Nuzzled under the winter. The bright bells rang.
He warmed his hands at the stove and shivered a little
Hearing that ice-sweet chime. He was better now,
But his blood felt thin when he thought of skating along
Over black agate floors in the bonfire light
Or beating a girl’s red mittens free of the snow,
And he slept badly at times, when his flesh recalled
Certain smells and sights that were prison.
He stared at the clock where Phaëton’s horses lunged
With a queer nod of recognition. The rest had altered,
People and winter and nightmares and Ellen Baker,
Or stayed in a good dimension that he had lost,
But Phaëton was the same. He said to himself,
“I have met you twice, old, drunken charioteer,
Once in the woods, and once in a dirty shack
Where Death was a coin of spittle left on the floor.
I suppose we will meet again before there’s an end,
Well, let it happen. It must have been cold last year
At Fredericksburg. I’m glad I wasn’t in that.
Melora, what’s happened to you?” He saw Melora
Walking down from the woods in the low spring light.
His body hurt for a minute, but then it stopped.
He was getting well. He’d have to go back pretty soon.
He grinned, a little dryly, thinking of chance,
Father had seen the congressman after all,
Just before Shiloh. So now, nearly ten months later,
The curious wheels that are moved by such congressmen
Were sending him back to the Army of the Potomac,
Back with the old company, back with the Eastern voices,
Henry Fairfield limping along with his sticks,
Shot through both hips at Antietam. He didn’t care,
Except for losing Bailey, which made it tough.
He tried to puzzle out the change in his world
But gave it up. Things and people looked just the same,
You could love or like or detest them just the same way,
But whenever you tried to talk of your new dimension
It didn’t sound right, except to creatures like Bailey.
“I have met you twice, old, drunken charioteer,
The third time you may teach me how to be cool.”
Ned, asleep by the stove, woke up and yawned,
“Hello Ned,” said his master, with a half-smile,
“I told a girl about you, back in a wood,
You’d like that girl. She’d rub the back of your ears.
And Bailey’d like you too. I wish Bailey was here.
Want to go to war, Ned?” Ned yawned largely again.
Ellyat laughed. “You’re right, old fella,” he said,
“You get too mixed up in a war. You better stay here.
God, I’d like to sleep by a stove for a million years,
Turn into a dog and remember how to stand cold.”
The clock struck five. Jack Ellyat jumped at the sound
Then he sank back. “No, fooled you that time,” he said,
As if the strokes had been bullets. Then he turned
To see his mother, coming in with a lamp,
And taste the strange tastes of supper and quietness.
John Vilas heard the beating of another
Sleet at another and
