When the opulence of summer unto wood and meadow comes,
And within the tangled graveyard riot old-time spice and bloom,
Then dear Nature brings her tribute to “the smallest of the drums,”
Spreads the sweetest of her blossoms on the little soldier’s tomb.
In the quiet country village, still they tell you how he died;
And the story moves you strangely, more than other tales of war.
Thrice heroic seems the hero, if he be a child beside,
And the wound that tears his bosom is more sad than others far.
In the ranks of Sherman’s army none so young and small as he,
With his face so soft and dimpled, and his innocent blue eyes.
Yet of all the Union drummers he could drum most skillfully,
With a spirit--said his colonel--fit to make the dead arise!
In the charge at Chickamauga (so, beside his little grave,
You may learn the hero’s story of some villager, perchance),
When his regiment sank, broken, from the rampart, like a wave,
Thrice the clangor of his drum-beat rallied to a fresh advance.
There he stood upon the hillside, capless, with his shining hair
Blown about his childish forehead like the bright silk of the corn;
And the men looked up, and saw him standing brave and scathless there,
As an angel on a hilltop, in the drifting mist ofmorn.
Thrice they rallied at his drum-beat,--then the tattered flag went down!
Some one caught it, waved it skyward for a moment, and then fell.
In the dust, and gore, and drabble, all the stars of freedom’s crown,
And the soldiers beaten backward from the emblem loved so well!
Then our drummer boy, our hero, from his neck the drum-cord flung,
And amid the hail of bullets to the fallen banner sped.
Quick he raised it from dishonor; quick before them all he sprung,
And in fearless, proud defiance, waved the old flag o’er his head!
For a minute’s space the cheering, louder than the singing balls,
And the soldiers pressing forward, closing up their broken line!
Then the child’s bright head, death-stricken, on his throbbing bosom falls,
And the brave eyes that God lighted cease with life and soul to shine.
In the flag he saved they wrapped him; in that starry shroud he lies,
And the roses, and the lilacs, and the daisies seem to know;
For in all that peaceful acre, sleeping ’neath the summer skies,
There is neither mound nor tablet that is wreathed and guarded so!