THE OLD SERGEANT

[JANUARY 1, 1863.]

The Carrier cannot sing to-day the ballads
With which he used to go,

Rhyming the glad rounds of the happy New Years
That are now beneath the snow:

For the same awful and portentous Shadow
That overcast the earth,

And smote the land last year with desolation,
Still darkens every hearth.

And the Carrier hears Beethoven's mighty death-march
Come up from every mart;

And he hears and feels it breathing in his bosom,
And beating in his heart.

And to-day, a scarred and weather-beaten veteran,
Again he comes along,

To tell the story of the Old Year's struggles
In another New Year's song.

And the song is his, but not so with the story ;
For the story, you must know,

Was told in prose to Assistant-Surgeon Austin,
By a soldier of Shiloh :

By Robert Burton, who was brought up on the Adams,
With his death-wound in his side;

And who told the story to the Assistant-Surgeon,
On the same night that he died.

But the singer feels it will better suit the ballad,
If all should deem it right,

To tell the story as if what it speaks of
Had happened but last night.

"Come a little nearer, Doctor,-thank you; let me take the cup :
Draw your chair up,- draw it closer; just another little sup!
May be you think I'm better; but I'm pretty well used up,-
Doctor, you 've done all you could do, but I 'm just a-going up !

"Feel my pulse, sir, if you want to, but it ain't much use to try"

"Never say that," said the Surgeon, as he smothered down a sigh;

"It will never do, old comrade, for a soldier to say die!"

What you say will make no difference, Doctor, when you come

to die.

66 Doctor, what has been the matter ?”

they say;

"You were very faint,

"Doctor, have I been

You must try to get to sleep now.

stay!

"Doctor-Doctor, please to

There is something I must tell you, and you won't have lng to

stay!

"I have got my marching orders, and I'm ready now to go; Doctor, did you say I fainted?- but it couldn't ha' been so,

For as sure as I 'm a Sergeant, and was wounded at Shiloh,
I 've this very night been back there, on the old field of Shiloh !

"This is all that I remember: The last time the Lighter came, And the lights had all been lowered, and the noises much the

same,

He had not been gone five minutes before something called my

name:

'ORDERLY SERGEANT

called my name.

ROBERT BURTON!'-just that way it

"And I wondered who could call me so distinctly and so slow, Knew it couldn't be the Lighter, he could not have spoken so, And I tried to answer, 'Here, sir!' but I couldn't make it go; For I couldn't move a muscle, and I couldn't make it go.

"Then I thought: It's all a nightmare, all a humbug and a

bore;

Just another foolish grape-vine - and it won't come any more; But it came, sir, notwithstanding, just the same way as before: 'ORDERLY SERGEANT - ROBERT BURTON !'- even louder than

before.

"That is all that I remember, till a sudden burst of light,
And I stood beside the River, where we stood that Sunday night,
Waiting to be ferried over to the dark bluffs opposite,
When the river was perdition and all hell was opposite ! -

"And the same old palpitation came again in all its power,
And I heard a Bugle sounding, as from some celestial Tower;
And the same mysterious voice said: 'IT IS THE ELEVENTH
HOUR!'

'ORDERLY SERGEANT - ROBERT BURTON - IT IS THE ELEVENTH HOUR!'

"Dr. Austin !—what day is this?" "It is Wednesday night, you

know."

"Yes,- to-morrow will be New Year's and a right good time

below!

"There was where the gunboats opened on the dark rebellious

host;

And where Webster semicircled his last guns upon the coast; There were still the two log-houses, just the same, or else their ghost!

And the same old transport came and took me over —or its ghost!

"And the old field lay before me, all deserted, far and wide; There was where they fell on Prentiss - there McClernand met the tide ;

There was where stern Sherman rallied, and where Hurlbut's heroes died,―

Lower down, where Wallace charged them, and kept charging till he died.

"There was where Lew Wallace showed them he was of the canny kin,

There was where old Nelson thundered, and where Rousseau waded in ;

There McCook sent 'em to breakfast, and we all began to win
There was where the grape-shot took me, just as we began to win.
"Now, a shroud of snow and silence over everything was spread;
And but for this old blue mantle and the old hat on my head,
I should not have even doubted, to this moment, I was dead,-
For my footsteps were as silent as the snow upon the dead!
"Death and silence! - Death and silence! all around me as I
sped!

And behold, a mighty Tower, as if builded to the dead,
To the Heaven of the heavens lifted up its mighty head,
Till the Stars and Stripes of Heaven all seemed waving from its
head!

"Round and mighty based it towered up into the infinite
And I knew no mortal mason could have built a shaft so bright;
For it shone like solid sunshine; and a winding stair of light
Wound around it and around it till it wound clear out of sight!

"And, behold, as I approached it with a rapt and dazzled

stare,

Thinking that I saw old comrades just ascending the great Stair,Suddenly the solemn challenge broke of 'Halt! and who goes there ?'

'I'm a friend,' I said, 'if you are.' 'Then advance, sir, to the Stair!'

"I advanced! That sentry, Doctor, was Elijah Ballantyne ! First of all to fall on Monday, after we had formed the line! 'Welcome, my old Sergeant, welcome! Welcome by that countersign!'

And he pointed to the scar there, under this old cloak of mine.

"As he grasped my hand, I shuddered, thinking only of, the grave;

But he smiled and pointed upward with a bright and bloodless glaive :

'That's the way, sir, to Headquarters.' 'What Headquarters ?' 'Of the Brave.'

'But the great Tower?' 'That was builded of the great deeds of the Brave!'

"Then a sudden shame came o'er me at his uniform of light; At my own so old and battered, and at his so new and bright; 'Ah!' said he, 'you have forgotten the new uniform to-night! Hurry back, for you must be here at just twelve o'clock to-night!'

"And the next thing I remember, you were sitting there, and I....

Doctor - did you hear a footstep? Hark! - God bless you all! Good-bye!

Doctor, please to give my musket and my knapsack, when I die, To my son my son that 's coming,- he won't get here till I die!

"Tell him his old father blessed him

-

as he never did before,— And to carry that old musket" . . . . Hark! a knock is at the

door!

"Till the Union"

See! it opens! . . . . "Father! Fath

er! speak once more!

“Bless you !”— gasped the old gray Sergeant. And he lay and

said no more!

BYRON FORCEYTHE WILLSON.

THE PLACE WHERE MAN SHOULD DIE

How little recks it where men lie,
When once the moment 's past
In which the dim and glazing eye
Has looked on earth its last,
Whether beneath the sculptured urn
The coffined form shall rest,

Or in its nakedness return

Back to its mother's breast!

Death is a common friend or foe,
As different men may hold,
And at his summons each must go,
The timid and the bold;

But when the spirit, free and warm,
Deserts it, as it must,

What matter where the lifeless form
Dissolves again to dust ?

The soldier falls 'mid corses piled
Upon the battle-plain,

Where reinless war-steeds gallop wild
Above the gory slain;

But though his corse be grim to see,
Hoof-trampled on the sod,

What recks it, when the spirit free
Has soared aloft to God?

The coward's dying eyes may close
Upon his downy bed,

And softest hands his limbs compose,
Or garments o'er them spread:
But ye who shun the bloody fray,
Where fall the mangled brave,
Go strip his coffin-lid away,
And see him in his grave!

'T were sweet, indeed, to close our eyes,
With those we cherish near,
And, wafted upward by their sighs,
Soar to some calmer sphere:

But whether on the scaffold high,
Or in the battle's van,

The fittest place where man can die

Is where he dies for man!

MICHAEL JOSEPH BARRY.

THE BELLS OF SHANDON

WITH deep affection

And recollection

I often think of

Those Shandon bells,

Whose sounds so wild would,
In the days of childhood,

Fling round my cradle

Their magic spells.