“If a crow intends to fly over the Valley now
He’ll have to carry his own provisions,” says Sheridan.
The lonely man with the chin like John Calhoun’s
Knows it is over, will not know it is over.
Many hands are turning against him in these last years.
He makes mistakes. He is stubborn and sick at heart.
He is inflexible with fate and men.
It is over. It cannot be. He fights to the end,
Clinging to one last dream—of somehow, somewhere,
A last, miraculous battle where he can lead
One wing of the Southern army and Lee the other
And so wrench victory out of the failing odds.
Why is it a dream? He has studied grand strategy,
He was thought a competent soldier in Mexico,
He was Secretary of War once— He is the rigid
Scholar we know and have seen in another place,
Lacking that scholar’s largeness, but with the same
Tight mouth, the same intentness on one concept,
The same ideal that must bend all life to its will
Or break to pieces—and that is the best of him.
The pettiness is the pettiness of a girl
More than a man’s—a brilliant and shrewish girl,
Never too well in body yet living long.
He has that unforgiveness of women in him
And women will always know him better than men
Except for a few, in spite of Mexican wars,
In spite of this last, most desolate, warlike dream.
Give him the tasks that other scholar assumed,
He would not have borne them as greatly or with such skill,
And yet—one can find a likeness. So now he dreams
Hopelessly of a fight he will never fight
And if worst comes to worst, perhaps, of a last
Plutarch-death on a shield. It is not to be.
He will snatch up a cloak of his wife’s by accident
In the moment before his capture, and so be seen,
The proud man turned into farce, into sorry farce
Before the ignorant gapers. He shades his eyes
To rest them a moment, turns to his work again.
The gaunt man, Abraham Lincoln, lives his days.
For a while the sky above him is very dark.
There are fifty thousand dead in these last, bleak months
And Richmond is still untaken. The papers rail,
Grant is a butcher, the war will never be done.
The gaunt man’s term of office draws to an end,
His best friends muse and are doubtful. He thinks himself
For a while that when the time of election comes
He will not be re-elected. He does not flinch.
He draws up a paper and seals it with his own hand.
His cabinet signs it, unread. Such writing might be
A long historic excuse for defeated strength.
This is very short and strict with its commonsense.
“It seems we may not rule this nation again.
If so, we must do our best, while we still have time,
To plan with the new rulers who are to come
How best to save the Union before they come,
For they will have been elected upon such grounds
That they cannot possibly save it, once in our place.”
The cloud lifts, after all. They bring him the news.
He is sure of being President four years more.
He thinks about it. He says, “Well, I guess they thought
They’d better not swap horses, crossing a stream.”
The deserters begin to leave the Confederate armies. …
Luke Breckinridge woke up one sunshiny morning
Alone, in a roadside ditch, to be hungry again,
Though he was used to being hungry by now.
He looked at his rifle and thought, “Well, I ought to clean it.”
He looked at his feet and he thought, “Well, I ought to get
Another bunch of rags if we-uns is goin’
To march much more—these rags is down to my hide.”
He looked at his ribs through the tears in his dirty shirt
And he thought, “Well, I sure am thin as a razorback.
Well, that’s the way it is. Well, I ought to do somethin’.
I ought to catch up with the boys. I wish I remembered
When I had to quit marchin’ last night. Well, if I start now,
I reckon I’m bound to catch ’em.” But when he rose
He looked at the road and saw where the march had passed
—Feet going on through the dust and the sallow mud,
Feet going on forever—
He saw that track.
He was suddenly very tired.
He had been tired after fighting often enough
But this was another weariness.
He rubbed his head in his hands for a minute or so,
As if to rub some slow thought out of his mind
But it would not be rubbed away. “I’m near it,” he thought,
“The hotel ain’t a mile from here if Sophy’s still there.
Well, they wouldn’t give me a furlough when I ast.
Well, it’s been a long time.” On the way to the plank hotel
He still kept mumbling, “I can catch up to the boys.”
But another thought too vague to be called a thought
Washed over the mumble, drowning it, forcing it down.
The grey front door was open. No one was there.
He stood for a moment silent, watching the sun
Fall through the open door and pool in the dust.
“Sophy!” he called. He waited. Then he went in.
The flies were buzzing over the dirty plates
In the dining room and nobody there at all.
It made him feel tired. He started to climb the stairs.
“Hey, Sophy!” he called and listened. There was a creak
From somewhere, a little noise like a dusty rat
Running across a dusty, sun-splattered board.
His hands felt stronger. He was on the second floor
Slamming the doors of empty room after room
And calling “Sophy!” At last he found the locked door.
He broke it down with his shoulder in a loud noise.
She was lying in bed with the covers up to her chin
And her thin hands clutching the covers. “Well, Soph,” he said.
“Well, it’s you,” she said. They stared at each other awhile.
“The rest of ’em’s gone,” she said. “They went off last night.
We haven’t had no business. The nigger said
The Yanks were coming. They didn’t have room in the cart.
They said I could stay for a while and take care of things
Or walk if I wanted. I guess Mr. Pollet’s crazy.
He was talking things to himself all the time they went.
I never slept in a bed like this before.
I didn’t know you could sleep so soft in a bed.”
“Did they
