With the live blood running through it, making it warm.
He was real. He wore clothes. He could make all this go away
If he shut his eyes. They’d turn him loose in a minute.
They were all nice fellers. They wouldn’t treat a man mean.
They couldn’t be going to hang him. But they were.
Lucy Weatherby spread out gowns on a bed
And wondered which she could wear to the next levee.
The blue was faded, the rose brocade had a tear,
She’d worn the flowered satin a dozen times,
The apricot had never gone with her hair,
And somebody had to look nice at the evening parties.
But it was hard. The blockade runners of course—
But so few of them had space for gowns any more
And, really, they charged such prices! Of course it is
The war, and, of course, when one thinks of our dear, brave boys—
But, nevertheless, they like a girl to look fresh
When they come back from their fighting. When one goes up
To the winter-camps, it doesn’t matter so much,
Any old rag will do for that sort of thing.
But here, in Richmond … She pondered, mentally stitching,
Cutting and shaping, lost in a pleasant dream.
Fighting at Chancellorsville and Hooker beaten
And nobody killed that you knew so terribly well
Except Jo Frear’s second brother—though it was sad
Our splendid general Jackson’s lost his arm,
Such an odd man but so religious. She hummed a moment
“That’s Stonewall Jackson’s way” in her clear cool voice.
“I really should have trained for nursing,” she thought.
She heard a voice say, “Yes, the General’s very ill,
But that lovely new nurse will save him if anyone can.
She came out from Richmond on purpose.” The voice stopped speaking.
She thought of last month and the boys and the Black Horse Troop,
And the haggard little room in Pollet’s Hotel
Whose slipshod chambermaid had such scared, round eyes.
She was just as glad they were fighting now, after all,
Huger had been so jealous and Clay so wild,
It was quite a strain to be engaged to them both
Especially when Jim Merrihew kept on writing
And that nice Alabama major— She heard the bells
Ring for a wedding—but who was the man beside her?
He had a face made up of too many faces.
And yet, a young girl must marry— You may dance,
Play in the sun and wear bright gowns to levees,
But soon or late, the hands unlike to your hands
But rough and seeking, will catch your lightness at last
And with strange passion force you. What is this passion,
This injury that women must bear for gowns?
It does not move me or stir me. I will not bear it.
There are women enough to bear it. If I have sweetness,
It is for another service. It is my own.
I will not share it. I’ll play in the heat of the sun.
And yet, young girls must marry—what am I thinking?
She stepped from her hoops to try on the rose brocade,
But let it lie for a moment, while she stood up
To look at the bright ghost-girl in the long dark mirror,
Adoringly. “Oh, you honey,” she thought. “You honey!
You look so pretty—and nobody knows but me.
Nobody knows.” She kissed her little white shoulders,
With fierce and pitying love for their shining whiteness,
So soft, so smooth, so untarnished, so honey-sweet.
Her eyes were veiled. She swayed in front of the mirror.
“Honey, I love you,” she whispered, “I love you, honey.
Nobody loves you like I do, do they, sugar?
Nobody knows but Lucy how sweet you are.
You mustn’t get married, honey. You mustn’t leave me.
We’ll be pretty and sweet to all of them, won’t we, honey?
We’ll always have beaus to dance with and tunes to dance to,
But you mustn’t leave me, honey. I couldn’t bear it.
You mustn’t ever leave me for any man.”
In the dense heart of the thicketed Wilderness,
Stonewall Jackson lies dying for four long days.
They have cut off his arm, they have tried such arts as they know,
But no arts now can save him. When he was hit
By the blind chance bullet-spatter from his own lines,
In the night, in the darkness, they stole him off from the field
To keep the men from knowing, but the men knew.
The dogs in the house will know when there’s something wrong.
You do not have to tell them. He marched his men
That grim first day across the whole Union front
To strike a sleepy right wing with a sudden stone
And roll it up—it was his old trick of war
That Lee and he could play like finger and thumb!
It was the last time they played so. When the blue-coated
Unprepared ranks of Howard saw that storm,
Heralded by wild rabbits and frightened deer,
Burst on them yelling, out of the whispering woods,
They could not face it. Some men died where they stood,
The storm passed over the rest. It was Jackson’s storm,
It was his old trick of war, for the last time played.
He must have known it. He loosed it and drove it on,
Hearing the long yell shake like an Indian cry
Through the dense black oaks, the clumps of second-growth pine,
And the red flags reel ahead through the underbrush.
It was the hour he did not stop to taste,
Being himself. He saw it and found it good,
But night was falling, the Union centre still held,
Another attack would end it. He pressed ahead
Through the dusk, pushing Little Sorrel, as if the horse
Were iron, and he were iron, and all his men
Not men but iron, the stalks of an iron broom
Sweeping a dirt floor clean—and yet, as he rode,
A canny captain, planning a ruthless chess
Skilfully as night fell. The night fell too soon.
It is hard to tell your friend from your enemy
In such a night. So he rode too far in advance
And, turning back toward his lines, unrecognized,
Was fired upon in the night, in the stumbling darkness,
By his own men. He had ridden such rides before
Often enough and taken the chance of them,
But this chance was his bane. He lay on the bed
After the arm had been lopped from him, grim and silent,
Refusing importunate Death with terrible eyes.
Death was a servant and Death was a sulky dog
And Death crouched down by the Lord in the Lord’s
