Balm of the bruised and bleeding heart, oh, sinless Lamb of God,
To thee on bended knees, with tears of bitterness, I pray,
For thou canst heal my stricken heart and guide me on the way.
BATTLE OF NASHVILLE
DECEMBER 15-16, 1864.
[Written as a Carriers’ Address for the Nashville _Daily Press and
Times_, December 25, 1864.]
THE PREPARATION.
All day, while gazing from yon lofty tower,
We saw, far gleaming through the mist and smoke,
The camps, like fleets upon a circling sea,
Or snowdrifts sleeping on the frozen hills,
Dumb batteries, like bloodhounds in the leash,
Yet terrible in silence, the blue tide
Of cavalry, the battle’s foremost wave;
The gunboats on the left; upon the right
Fort Gillem’s bannered staff, and to the south
Fort Negley’s bastions belting St. Cloud’s hill,
And Morton and Casino by its side.
How soon their guns will belch their sulphurous breath
Upon the crimson carnival of Death!
THE NIGHT SCENE.
But when the darkness swallowed up the day,
As if we entered the Elysian fields,
Through the encircling clouds of awful night,
We saw a glowing Paradise of light.
A thousand camp-fires blossomed on the hills,
The flame-leaved lilies of the Field of Mars,
Minerva’s bloody roses, passion-flowers,
Planted by sooty Vulcan, whose red disc
Thrive best in crimson showers, and gather strength,
Fanned by the moans and sighs of dying men,
Each tented hill and pyramid of fire
Flashed round the dark horizon, till it seemed
A billowed sea of many-twinkling lights,
Or burning girdle of Vesuvian crests
Whose surging lava trembled to o’erleap
Their glowing craters and engulf the plains.
Alas, for many a harnessed warrior when
Yon Battle-Titan turns him in his den!
THE PRELUDE.
Hearken! In the murky morning,
Sounds the awful note of warning.
Winding down the river shore
Tramps the veteran Sixteenth Corps,
Wilson’s bugles charm the river,
With the signal of advance,
Twenty thousand guidons quiver
From the horsemen’s tapering lance!
Twenty thousand chargers’ feet
Hurry through the startled street,
Stretching “to the crack of doom”
Till they vanish in the gloom
Of the woods which fringe the west
Round Fort Zollicoffer’s crest.
We hear along the western shore
The sullen battle’s opening roar,
While in the clouds, like the Angel of Death,
The white-winged shells pour their sulphurous breath.
Hatch’s horsemen spur their steeds,
Croxton’s sabres bright and gleaming,
Johnson in the vanguard leads
Still encircling, still advancing,
Onward like a torrent’s dashing,
Spaulding’s carbine fire is flashing,
Like a serpent line of fire--
Stewart reels before their ire.
Rolls the battle-tumult higher--
The soldier falls--the charger bleeds,
Stewart’s line recoils!--recedes!
“Charge the batteries!”--It is done--
Stewart’s legions turn and fly--
Swells the glad shout of Victory!--
So the first day’s strife is won
THE SECOND DAY.
The morning breaks
With battle thunder,
The city wakes
With fear and wonder.
See the glittering bayonets shine,
Along the front of Steedman’s line.
The bugle’s call--the rolling drum--
The mad shriek of the flying shell,
The rush--the soldier’s frenzied yell,
The crash of the exploding bomb
Careering wildly through the air,
The distant batteries’ vivid glare,
The cannons’ smoke which jets aloof,
The foaming charger’s clattering hoof,
The musketry’s incessant shower,
Drifting its lead ’round Acklin’s tower;
The cannister’s consuming spray,
Where dauntless Steedman cleaves his way;
Or fearless Wood’s heroic form
Lion-like, confronts the storm,
Startle the eye and stun the ear
As sweeps the battle’s wild career
There is dread and desperation,
There is wrath and trepidation;
They grapple, they reel
In the sharp shock of steel,
They struggle, they bleed,
They rush, they recede;
Death’s harvesters labor
With carbine and sabre.
In swaths the dead are falling, and the maimed and bleeding writhe
Before the steady swinging of the ponderous battle-scythe.
THE CHIEF.
Serene and steady as the Polar Star
Whose light no clouds can quench nor billows mar
But shines while tempests lash the deep below,
Thomas surveyed the turbid storm of war,
And gazed and watched to strike the final blow,
The Rock of Chickamauga, braving the whirlwind’s jar.
THE CHARGE.
Freemen of the stern Northwest,
Come with bayonets in rest,
Exiles of East Tennessee
Strike! and make the oppressor flee.
Warriors once in fetters bound,
With liberty would you be crowned?
Now or never stand your ground,
Make your fearless masters feel
The vengeance of a freeman’s steel,
And _with_ or _on_ your shining shield
Return in glory from the field.
Clenched lips turn pale, but they pale not with fear,
And the soldier’s eye gleams like a star in its sphere,--
There’s a hush!
There’s a rumbling and crush,
Like the breaking of the ice in a thawing river’s flush,
The solid earth shakes with a universal rush,
The clouds of battle break,
The hills in terror quake,
While the fire crackles down their sides like a red volcanic lake--
Beneath whose fiery surge that day full many a bark went down,
And many a soul which morning woke from dreams of high renown.
Face to face and sword to sword--
See the slave confront his lord;
Through the tumult the foam-covered charger is spurred,
And the shrieks of the wounded and dying are heard;
And the muskets and carbines are doubled and battered
And sabres and bayonets to atoms are scattered--
The command and the curse, and the groan and the yell,
Thunder up like the mad-bubbling cauldron of Hell.[B]
Eagles of victory, say, on which flag will you alight--
Confederate or Federal? Both deem their cause is right;
Never more fearless rivals grappled in mortal fight.
No carpet knights are they, but iron-sinewed men,
From office, mine, and workshop, from mountain, prairie, glen,
From legendary Southern river, from sparkling Northern lake,
From Indiana beechwood, or Arkansas cane-brake.
All worthy of the highest song that dropped from Homer’s pen.
Leonidas at Thermopylæ led on no braver crew
Than those who bore the “Stars and Bars”; nor bloody Waterloo,
Than the men who carried the “Stars and Stripes” where bullets
thickest flew.
God speed the day when the boys in Gray shall charge with the
boys in Blue,
And San Juan and Manila Bay a loving-cup shall brew,
And Dewey and Joe Wheeler the old love shall renew.
Where is Thomas? His lips compressed,
Smother the tumult in his breast;
Along the line his clear survey
Scans the sure fortune of the day.
“Forward to the charge once more!”
Then like the Judgment thunder,
Cleaving the clouds asunder,
The shock of battle sweeps from shore to shore
And shakes the rock-ribbed valley with its roar.
Like a tropical tornado, Death pours his crimson rain
In swirling drifts of slaughter along the trampled plain.
Bleeding and torn and shattered, Hood’s vanquished legions fly,
And along the Union line goes up the shout of victory.
Thus Nashville’s Two Days’ Battle by our silent chief was won,
And our hearts were filled with gladness at the setting of the sun.
BLONDE AND BRUNETTE.
Two clouds, gold and purple, at sunrise contending;
Two chords of rare music, contrasting and blending,
Through the carnival flying like sunshine and shadow,
Pursuing each other o’er mountain and meadow,
Swept our blonde and brunette, all radiant with joy--
Cleopatra of Egypt, and Helen of Troy.
The blonde is a dew-spangled morning in June
When birds, breeze and bees with the sun are in tune;
Her lips and the rose scent the crystalline air
And the sunshine is lost in the gold of her hair.
The brunette is a ray of the mystical light
Which falls from the moon on a midsummer night,
And visions celestial of Loveland arise,
From the luminous depths of her violet eyes;
And each rapturous gleam of her presence gives birth
To the joys which fair Venus brought down to the earth.
GRAY AND BLUE.
DEDICATED TO COL. R. W. BROWN, OF THE LOUISVILLE TIMES.
The rage and the chaos of battle,
The carnage and anguish are o’er,
The wrath and the rout of Manassas,
The death-knell of Gettysburg’s roar;
And softly, round Nashville and Richmond,
Descends, like Christ’s mercy, the dew
Where sleep, till the angel of Judgment
Shall wake them, the Gray and the Blue.
From the gray of the balm-breathing morning
The mists of the night flee away
Till the sun, in his orient splendor,
Paints the vault with the clear blue of day;
As those colors in Heaven commingle,
O, hearts that are faithful and true!
Blend now in affection together
By your love of the Gray and the Blue.
Earth wondered when fought the gray legions
Round Johnston and Cleburne and Lee,
When the Blue followed Grant, Meade, and Thomas
And Sherman marched down to the sea;
And Stuart’s and Sheridan’s horsemen
In scorn smote the war-dragon’s mouth,
A stone wall of granite the Northland,
A stone wall of marble the South.
Strew roses, the sweetest of Summer,
For brave and magnanimous Lee,
For Lincoln, the merciful victor,
For the slain on the land and the sea,
And the States in communion forever
Like eagles their strength shall renew,
And the Star of our Union shine brighter
In the concord of Gray and of Blue.
Not vainly you perished, O brothers!
For the land of your deathless devotion,
The torch-bearing maid of Bartholdi
Is kindling with splendor the ocean.
One flag over Northland and Southland,
Shall rally the faithful and true,
While ocean rolls gray in the morning,
Or mirrors the stars in its blue.
BISHOP DUDLEY’S DIRGE.
Hang old Christ Church with purple,
The colors of a king,
In honor of the kingly soul
Which hence has taken wing;
In consolation’s labor
He fell--his Lord’s behest--
So evening skies are purple-clad
When goes the sun to rest.
Paul’s Bishop--“Blameless, Vigilant,
Wise, Patient, apt to Teach,”
Careless of fame or lucre,
All men he longed to reach;
“Of Good Report ’mongst those Without,”
Pure, Genial, Loyal, True,
Thus, “Brother Man,” God’s Bishop
Toiled, preached, and sowed for you.
Thus through the land toiled, preached, and sowed
The manliest of men
The seeds of truth, and from his dust
Shall spring his like again;
New Dudleys--’tis the Master’s pledge--
Shall at his voice arise,
For his immortal spirit speaks
To earth from Paradise,
And the purple robes of other kings--
Such force a good example brings--
Shall glorify the skies.
THE DRESS CIRCLE.
[A ball-room mishap of crinoline days, founded on fact.]
“When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.”--_Hamlet_.
“Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle
Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime”?
Where the girls live on partridges, oysters and turtle,
And their days fly as swift as a musical rhyme?
If you don’t it’s a pity--I think you had better
Now listen, my story is true to the letter.
O Lulu! dear Lulu! most beautiful one,
Whose dark locks sweep over thy exquisite face,
As the wings of the tempest o’ershadow the sun,
Fair fawn of the forest, thy bright dwelling place,
Where the partridges, oysters and turtle were swallowed,
With catsups and pickles, and fixin’s more solid,
Was graced by no damsel so charming as thou
Or so hapless, the night I am writing of now.
Dear Lulu, sweet angel, was just coming out,
As they say, had just let the tucks out of her dresses,
Had such a sly ogle, and the prettiest pout,
And a coiffeur de Paris did up her tresses,
So her Ma, Mrs. Browne, to give her a start, she
Determined, one summer, to give her a party,
The rout of the season, where her darling Lulu
Might capture the town by her brilliant debut.
(They rig up blood-horses with ribbons, you know,
To make them sell quicker, when brought to the show.)
So she sent a darky round the town, with cards to the elite,
With “Mrs. Browne’s regards and she’ll be at home to-night.”
The clock struck ten, the carriages drew up before the gate,
The ton display their quality by coming rather late.
A crowd it was, you may be sure, of opulence and fashion,
For Mrs. Browne had for high life what one would call a passion.
There were satins, muslin, taffetas and laces, and illusion
Like all the rainbows since the flood crushed in one grand confusion,
And as her guests the parlor thronged, delighted Mrs. Browne
Felt just a notch or two above all rival Mas in town.
O feminine, O masculine embarrassment of riches!
For those who wore and those who longed for bifurcated breeches!
There was flouncing Miss Barege, and grass-widow, Madame Clack,
Miss Creame-Cocaine, the dreamer, whey-faced, of morals slack,
Miss Polly Prude, the finical, fastidious and precise,
Miss Reverie, a tall bas bleu with sentimental eyes,
Miss Twitchell, always twitching, Miss Giggle with her twitter,
Miss Dumb-Bell of the wallflower set, a most accomplished sitter,
All planets of the Milky Way; as for the herd of beaux,
Know one, know all--mustachios, gloves, smirks, bows and
faultless clothes.
But for laughing and screaming and ogling and dancing,
Coquetting and ogling and sighing and glancing,
Madame Mazourka that night made her mark,
As a punk that took fire at the flash of each spark,
So high in her waltzing, so low in her dress, that
She really left gazers very little to guess at.
For each time that she bounded or gracefully fell--
For where her grace bounded, sin much more abounded--
Each curve was so plumply and gracefully rounded--
The dullest of eyes could discern the fine swell
Of her dress, and much more than is proper to tell.
I’ve a hearty contempt--I hope nobody’s hurt
For that pitiful nuisance, a married flirt,
Whether it wears a chemise or shirt,
For when the green season of myrtles is o’er
This wrinkled-faced courtship is rather a bore,
And the musk and the paint on an old married lover
Don’t smell quite as sweetly as newly mown clover.
O you who are wedded, take care how you walk!
For the world is suspicious and people will talk,
And spectators may say--no accounting for taste--
No arm but a husband’s should encircle the waist
Of a lady that’s married, in the waltz’s mad whirls,
And no finger but his should disport with her curls;
But back to my story--the sin of digression
It’s really becoming my crying transgression,
But your feelings will hurry you sometimes away,
And genius, kind reader, you know must have play.
You pardon? Well, then, to take up the thread
Of my story--the old folks were snoring in bed;
In the western horizon the moon kept her course,
The talkers were drowsy, the singers were hoarse,
When Lulu was strolling the cool walks among
While her beau held her ear as she didn’t her tongue.
Sweet Venus and Cupid o’er the wide earth held reign
And the pennons streamed gay o’er their Castles in Spain.
O Lulu, dear Lulu! magnificent belle--
Whose name is a charm and whose presence a spell,
Bright star ever shining in Memory’s stream,
You were gowned on that night in the very extreme
Of fashion, indeed quite a crinoline belle,
You spread yourself so, and you made such a swell,
Your dress circle being made after the pattern
Of the rings that the telescope shows around Saturn,
Not whalebone or cordage, but Carnegie’s best steel,
As when you dance with her next time you can feel.
Now, I do not blame Lulu for her fondness for dress
It’s a passion some people find hard to repress,
And take this excuse, dear reader, I beg;
Her grandma had left her a very fine leg-
Acy, so having abundance of means,
And being quite young--indeed still in her teens--
She dressed herself up in the climax of style,
“A miss”--in circumference--“as good as a mile.”
Well, Lulu was chatting away with her beau
Of dances and courtships, and quarrels and so,
When all of a sudden she made a full stop
In her gay tête-a-tête, and screamed at the top
Of her voice, till each sleepy-eyed maid in the hall
Sprang quick to her feet at the terrible squall,
There pale as the Greek Slave of Powers she stood,
Her white lips unstained by a vestige of blood,
Her arms, like a Pythoness, in agony tossed,
As she shrieked in her anguish, “O Lord, I am lost!”
While footsteps fell round her as quick as the clatter
Of a cavalcade’s hoofs, each one bawling at her
“O Lulu, my darling, pray what is the matter?”
“A serpent is biting me under my dress!”
“Lord help us!” burst forth in a wail of distress,
“It’s coiling around my--It’s big as a rail,
And a great bunch of rattles tied on to its tail,”
Ne’er toper saw snake from his jag or his jug
Like this which clasped Lulu in terrible hug.
There were sobbings and swooning away on the floor,
Of disordered lingerie over a score,
“Unions,” “Merodes,” and garters galore,
Indeed ’twas a contretemps all might deplore!
“A snake at a dance!” “How dare poke its face
Into such an exceedingly improper place?”
So the old snake in Paradise brought us to grief;
He skulked behind Eve; Eve behind her fig leaf,
And this great world, which it took a whole week to make,
Went into bankruptcy, all for one snake.
O Fashion, what follies your votaries make,
What frauds to your bosom with rapture you take,
’Twixt the gay masquerade and the sorrowful wake,
One tenth is for fashion and nine tenths for mere fake,
And maidens adorn their fair forms with a snake;
For earrings, for bracelets, for necklace and jewel,
Diamonds and rubies for eyes cold and cruel.
Sparkling and dazzling at reception and mass,
On debutante’s fingers or on widow of grass,
O! feminine dragon!--how else depict her,
When the girl of my dreams turns boa-constrictor?
Why pineth fair woman’s heart for a snake?
Man would perish a million times o’er for her sake.
At last one golden youth, more bold than the rest,
Walked up, bowed and spoke as he pulled down his vest
“Well! crying won’t help it, so pray now be still,
They say there’s a way whene’er there’s a will,
I will tie up his tail in a sort of a link,
And jerk him from under his quarters, I think,”
Dread silence fell like a spell on the air,
Sobs hardly suppressed, inarticulate prayer,
When cautiously groping lest he might mistake,
And grab a--suspender instead of the snake,
He at last found the dragon and fastened his hold,
It was scaly and squirming, and quivering and cold,
Like a huge anaconda writhing its fold,
And then with a clutch that was steady and bold,
He twisted it up in a sort of a loop,
And jerked out--at least forty feet of steel hoop!
IN MEMORIAM.
[LIEUTENANT BOYD MERCER, ELEVENTH KENTUCKY INFANTRY, U. S. A., 1861.]
Some souls, unmoved by lust of fame or pelf,
Pass their whole lives without a thought of self;
No selfish schemes their high ideals smother--
Such was thy soul, my noble-hearted brother.
Modest in manner as a gentle maid,
As lion bold was duty’s call obeyed,
Nor man nor devil made thy soul afraid,
To home, to God and Country ever true.
Like skylark springing from the morning dew,
Thine upward, sunlit flight thou didst pursue.
The ocean’s costliest pearls lie ’neath its waves,
Blaze richest gems in undiscovered caves,
And like the wealth o’er which the ocean rolls
God knows the value of his purest souls.
Citizen and Christian soldier--why lament
A life so truly planned, so nobly spent?
Now without taint or mixture of alloy
Christ’s soldier marches in eternal joy.
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT BOYD MERCER
First Kentucky Regiment, U. S. A.]
THE SORROWS OF HINDA AND KLEINFELTER.
“The course of true love never did run smooth.”--_Shakespeare._
I.
Maidens, say, heard ye the sorrowful story
Of a turreted castle all mossy and hoary,
That stood on the banks of the dark-flowing Rhine,
Where the tall hills are clad with the grape-laden vine,
Where the strains of the flute and the plaintive guitar
Are echoed each night ’neath the glow of the star,
Where the days glide as smooth as the waves of the river,
And swift as the shaft from an Indian quiver?
Oh, Heaven has showered with a bountiful hand
All, all that is lovely and gorgeous and grand
On the Rhine’s noble valley, that beautiful land,
Yet alas!--for the tale I am going to tell
Is as sad as the chime of a funeral bell,
And oft as they pause at their leisure to listen,
The tear on the pale cheek of beauty will glisten.
Weeping they will turn away,
Sighing have I heard them say,
“Of all the woes that blight us from above,
The saddest is the pang of unrequited love.”
II.
In a castle gloomy and old
Once there dwelt a Baron bold,
Rich in acres and flocks and gold;
Sooth but he was a gallant knight,
Fond of his lager and fond of fight.
He was ever in the front
Of the battle or the hunt,
And of each struggle he bore the brunt!
None like him could wield the spear,
Or run down the flying deer,
Or drain the flagons of lager beer.
III.
The Baron had a daughter
Adored by all the swains:
Oh, she had wealth and beauty
And very little brains
Her breath was sweet
As the morning dew,
Her tresses were black,
And her eyes were blue.
Her foot was cased
In a delicate shoe,
If I remember, a one and a half,
Made of the finest Parisian calf,
So instead of walking,
Of course she flew,
As some of my female
Acquaintances do.
Her food was turnips
And cabbage and steak
And milk and peaches
And pudding and cake,
Weinies and kraut and the essence of bees,
That is to say, honey and Limberger cheese,
Horseradish to make an elephant sneeze.
So by high feeding
And very little reading,
Her waist did gradually acquire considerable diameter,
And her apron-strings were full as long as Tennyson’s hexameter.
IV.
Beneath the castle window
Each night were heard the strains
Of a poor love-smitten noble,
Who lived away out on the plains,
And walked ten weary miles each night,
To woo the Baron’s daughter,
Who lived in the gloomy castle
That stood by the Rhine’s blue water.
Oh, Kleinfelter burned with a desperate passion,
And he fixed it in music somewhat to this fashion:
“Oh transcendental Hinda,
Look from thy latticed window,
As here I sadly linger
And with a trembling finger
I thrum the strings
Of my sad guitar,
Or knock the ashes
From my fragrant cigar
Fairest of Heaven’s handiwork,
Sweetest of nature’s candy-work,
Here I pledge upon thine altar,
Love that knows not how to falter.
Grant, oh, grant some sweet return,
Nor my deep devotion spurn;
Let me have thy gentle heart or
Even a buckle of your garter!”
V.
Now Kleinfelter’s singing
Was undoubtedly splendid,
And its musical ringing
Could not easily be mended
It was soft and sweet and then it was loud
As a singing saint’s on a shining cloud;
Clear as the lark’s own morning call,
With a silvery chime like a waterfall.
So he had scarcely uttered a note,
When Hinda’s heart rose up in her throat,
Her breast felt a pang and her head felt a dizziness,
Oh, Kleinfelter’s serenade finished the business!
VI.
I know a maiden,
Her eyes are black
As the flying cloud
Of the tempest’s rack,
And the radiant glow
Of their glorious fire
Would quell and tame
A lion’s ire.
Sometimes they brighten
And lighten in gladness,
Sometimes their dark depths
Are shadowed with sadness,
But pensive or mirthful,
A soul flashes through,
That will silently charm you
And win and subdue.
Often have I heard her play
On the guitar some roundelay,
And as her white hands swept the strings,
Melody unsealed its springs,
And her sweet voice, though low and soft,
Rose like a seraph’s hymn aloft,
Rising and sinking in gentle swells;
Like a murmuring brook with its liquid bells,
Till the vanquished soul was borne along
On the rushing tide of resistless song.
VII.
But I am digressing--
I was going to say,
That just as Kleinfelter
Got in good way,
The Baron, hearing Kleinfelter’s song,
Thought he was piling it on rather strong,
So taking along a burly old vassal,
He quickly sneaked up to the top of his castle
He lay down on his stomach
And stuck his head over,
And there was Miss Hinda
And below was her lover.
He gritted his teeth and he held his breath,
And he inly vowed Kleinfelter’s death.
So jumping up and wheeling about,
He picked up a barrel of sour kraut,
And frantic with rage he hurled it over,
Plump on the head of the wretched lover.
Of course it ended Kleinfelter’s strains,
For it mashed his skull and scattered his brains,
And knocked the musician _out of time_
Into Eternity--horrible crime!
So ended Kleinfelter, and so ends my rhyme.
DR. JOHN A. BROADDUS.