And the head man saying, gently enough on the whole,
“Don’t you worry, m’am—he’ll make a good soldier yet
If he acts proper.” That was how they got Bent.
On the crest of the hill, the sweaty cannoneers,
The blackened Pennsylvanians, picked up their rammers
And fought the charge with handspikes and clubs and stones,
Biting and howling. It is said that they cried
Wildly, “Death on the soil of our native state
Rather than lose our guns.” A general says so.
He was not there. I do not know what they cried
But that they fought, there was witness—and that the grey
Wave that came on them fought, there was witness too.
For an instant that wheel of combat—and for an instant
A brief, hard-breathing hush. Then came the hard sound
Of a column tramping—blue reinforcements at last,
A doomsday sound to the grey. The hard column came
Over the battered crest and went in with a yell.
The grey charge bent and gave ground, the grey charge was broken.
The sweaty gunners fell to their guns again
And began to scatter the shells in the ebbing wave.
Thus ended the second day of the locked bull-horns
And the wounding or slaying of the twenty thousand.
And thus night came to cover it. So the field
Was alive all night with whispers and words and sighs,
So the slow blood dripped in the rocks of the Devil’s Den.
Lincoln, back in his White House, asks for news.
The War Department has little. There are reports
Of heavy firing near Gettysburg—that is all.
Davis, in Richmond, knows as little as he.
In hollow Vicksburg, the shells come down and come down
And the end is but two days off. On the field itself
Meade calls a council and considers retreat.
His left has held and the Round Tops still are his.
But his right has been shaken, his centre pierced for a time,
The enemy holds part of his works on Culp’s Hill,
His losses have been most stark. He thinks of these things
And decides at last to fight it out where he stands.
Ellyat lay upon Cemetery Hill.
His wounds had begun to burn. He was rising up
Through cold and vacant darknesses into faint light,
The yellow, watery light of a misty moon.
He stirred a little and groaned. There was something cool
On his face and hands. It was dew. He lay on his back
And stared at a blowing cloud and a moist, dark sky.
“Old charioteer,” he thought. He remembered dully
The charge. The charge had come. They had beaten the charge.
Now it was moist dark sky and the dew and his pain.
He tried to get his canteen but he couldn’t reach it.
That made him afraid. “I want some water,” he said.
He turned his head through stiff ages. Two feet away
A man was lying quietly, fast asleep,
A bearded man in an enemy uniform.
He had a canteen. Ellyat wet his lips with his tongue.
“Hey Johnnie, got some water?” he whispered weakly.
Then he saw that the Johnnie had only half a head,
And frowned because such men could not lend canteens.
He was half-delirious now, and it seemed to him
As if he had two bodies, one that was pain
And one that lay beyond pain, on a couch of dew,
And stared at the other with sober wondering eyes.
“Everyone’s dead around here but me,” he thought,
“And as long as I don’t sing out, they’ll think that I’m dead
And those stretcher-bearers won’t find me—there goes their lantern
No, it’s the moon—Sing out and tell ’em you’re here.”
The hot body cried and groaned. The cool watched it idly.
The yellow moon burst open like a ripe fruit
And from it rolled on a dark, streaked shelf of sky
A car and horses, bearing the brazen ball
Of the unbearable sun, that halted above him
In full rush forward, yet frozen, a motion congealed,
Heavy with light. Toy death above Gettysburg.
He saw it so and cried out in a weak, thin voice
While something jagged fitted into his heart
And the cool body watched idly. And then it was
A lantern, bobbing along through the clumped dead men,
That halted now for an instant. He cried again.
A voice said, “Listen, Jerry, you’re hearing things,
I’ve passed that feller twice and he’s dead all right,
I’ll bet you money.” Ellyat heard himself piping,
“I’m alive, God damn you! Can’t you hear I’m alive?”
Something laughed, quite close now. “All right, Bub,” said a cloud,
“We’ll take your word for it. My, but the boy’s got language!
Go ahead and cuss while we get you up on the stretcher—
It helps some—easy there, Joe.” Jack Ellyat fell
Out of his bodies into a whispering blackness
Through which, now and then, he could hear certain talking clouds
Cough or remark. One said. “That’s two and a half
You owe me, Joe. You’re pickin’ ’em wrong tonight.”
“Well, poor suckers,” said Joseph. “But all the same,
If this one doesn’t last till the dressing station
The bet’s off—take it slower, Jerry—it hurts him.”
Another clear dawn breaks over Gettysburg,
Promising heat and fair weather—and with the dawn
The guns are crashing again. It is the third day.
The morning wears with a stubborn fight at Culp’s Hill
That ends at last in Confederate repulse
And that barb-end of the fish-hook cleared of the grey.
Lee has tried his strokes on the right and left of the line.
The centre remains—that centre yesterday pierced
For a brief, wild moment in Wilcox’s attack,
But since then trenched, reinforced and alive with guns.
It is a chance. All war is a chance like that.
Lee considers the chance and the force he has left to spend
And states his will. Dutch Longstreet, the independent,
Demurs, as he has demurred since the fight began.
He had disapproved of this battle from the first
And that disapproval has added and is to add
Another weight in the balance against the grey.
It is not our task to try him for sense or folly,
Such men are the men they are—but an hour comes
Sometimes, to fix such men in most fateful parts,
As now with Longstreet who, if he had his orders
As they were given, neither obeyed them quite
Nor quite refused them, but acted as he thought best,
So did the half-thing, failed as he thought he would,
Felt justified and wrote all of his reasons down
Later in controversy. We do not need
Such controversies to see that pugnacious man
Talking to Lee,
