Did you hear of the fight at Corinth,
How we whipped out Price and Van Dorn?
* * * * *
A long and terrible day!
And at last, when night grew gray,
By the hundreds, there they lay,
(Heavy sleepers, you’d say,)
That wouldn’t wake on the morn.
Our staff was bare of a flag,
We didn’t carry a rag
In those brave marching days;--
Ah, no, but a finer thing!
With never a cord or string,
An eagle of ruffled wing,
And an eye of awful gaze.
The grape it rattled like hail,
The minies were dropping like rain,
The first of a thunder shower;
The wads were blowing like chaff,
(There was pounding like floor and flail,
All the front of our line!)
So we stood it hour after hour;
But our eagle, he felt fine!
’Twould have made you cheer and laugh,
To see, through that iron gale,
How the old fellow’d swoop and sail
Above the racket and roar,--
To right and to left he’d soar,
But ever came back, without fail,
And perched on his standard-staff.
All that day, I tell you true,
They had pressed us steady and fair,
Till we fought in street and square,--
(The affair, you might think, looked blue)
But we knew we had them there!
Our batteries were few,
Every gun, they’d have sworn, they knew,
But, you see, there were one or two
We had fixed for them, unaware.
On they came in solid column,
For once no whooping nor yell--
(Ah, I dare say they felt solemn!)
Front and flank, grape and shell,
Our batteries pounded away!
And the minies hummed to remind ’em
They had started on no child’s play!
Steady they kept a-going,
But a grim wake settled behind ’em
From the edge of the _abattis_,
(Where our dead and dying lay
Under fence and fallen tree,)
Up to Robinett, all the way
The dreadful swath kept growing!
’Twas butternut mixed with gray.
Ah, well--you know how it ended--
We did for them, there and then,
But their pluck throughout was splendid,
They stood to the last like men.
Red as blood, o’er the town,
The angry sun went down,
Firing flag-staff and vane;
And our eagle,--as for him,
There, all ruffled and grim,
He sat, o’erlooking the slain!
’Tis many a stormy day
Since, out of the cold bleak north,
Our great war-eagle sailed forth
To swoop o’er battle and fray.
Many and many a day
O’er charge and storm hath he wheeled,
Foray and foughten field,
Tramp, and volley, and rattle!--
Over crimson trench and turf,
Over climbing clouds of surf,
Through tempest and cannon-wrack,
Have his terrible pinions whirled;--
(A thousand fields of battle!
A million leagues of foam!)
But our bird shall yet come back,
He shall soar to his eyrie-home,
And his thunderous wings be furled,
In the gaze of a gladdened world,
On the nation’s loftiest dome.