The lights blaze high in our brilliant rooms;
Fair are the maidens who throng our halls;
Soft, through the warm and perfumed air,
The languid music swells and falls.
The "Seventh" dances and flirts to-night--
All we are fit for, so they say,
We fops and weaklings, who masquerade
As soldiers, sometimes, in black and gray.
We can manage to make a street parade,
But, in a fight, we'd be sure to run.
Defend you! pshaw, the thought's absurd!
How about April, sixty-one?
What was it made your dull blood thrill?
Why did you cheer, and weep, and pray?
Why did each pulse of your hearts mark time
To the tramp of the boys in black and gray?
You've not forgotten the nation's call
When down in the South the war-cloud burst;
"Troops for the front!" Do you ever think
Who answered, and marched, and got there _first_?
Whose bayonets first scared Maryland?
Whose were the colors that showed the way?
Who set the step for the marching North?
Some holiday soldiers in black and gray.
"Pretty boys in their pretty suits!"
"Too pretty by far to take under fire!"
A pretty boy in a pretty suit
Lay once in Bethel's bloody mire.
The first to fall in the war's first fight--
Raise him tenderly. Wash away
The blood and mire from the pretty suit;
For Winthrop died in the black and gray.
In the shameful days in sixty-three,
When the city fluttered in abject fear,
'Neath the mob's rude grasp, who ever thought--
"God! if the Seventh were only here!"
Our drums were heard--the ruffian crew
Grew tired of riot the self-same day--
By chance of course--you don't suppose
They feared the dandies in black and gray!
So we dance and flirt in our listless style
While the waltzes dream in the drill-room arch,
What would we do if the order came,
Sudden and sharp--"Let the Seventh march!"
Why, we'd faint, of course; our cheeks would pale;
Our knees would tremble, our fears--but stay,
That order I think has come ere this
To those holiday troops in black and gray.
"What would we do!" We'd drown our drums
In a storm of cheers, and the drill-room floor
Would ring with rifles. Why, you fools,
We'd do as we've always done before!
Do our duty! Take what comes
With laugh and jest, be it feast or fray--
But we're dandies--yes, for we'd rather die
Than sully the pride of our black and gray.
AFTER THE GERMAN.
A SOPHOMORE SOLILOQUY.
Blackboard, with ruler and rubber before me,
Chalk loosely held in my hand,
Sun-gilded motes in the air all around me,
Listlessly dreaming I stand.
What do I care for the problem I've written
In characters gracefully slight,
As the festal-robed beauties whose fairy feet flitted
Through the maze of the German last night!
What do I care for the lever of friction,
For sine, or co-ordinate plane,
When fairy musicians are playing the "Mabel,"
And waltzes each nerve in my brain!
On my coat's powdered chalk, not the dust of the diamond
That only last night sparkled there,
By the galop's wild whirl shower'd down on my shoulder
From turbulent tresses of hair.
In my ear is the clatter of chalk against blackboard,
Not music's voluptuous swell;
Alas! this is life,--so pass mortal pleasures,
And,--thank goodness, there goes the bell!
AN IDYL OF THE PERIOD.
IN TWO PARTS.
PART ONE.
"Come right in. How are you, Fred?
Find a chair, and get a light."
"Well, old man, recovered yet
From the Mather's jam last night?"
"Didn't dance. The German's old."
"Didn't you? I had to lead--
Awful bore! Did you go home?"
"No. Sat out with Molly Meade.
Jolly little girl she is--
Said she didn't care to dance,
'D rather sit and talk to me--
Then she gave me such a glance!
So, when you had cleared the room,
And impounded all the chairs,
Having nowhere else, we two
Took possession of the stairs.
I was on the lower step,
Molly, on the next above,
Gave me her bouquet to hold,
Asked me to undo her glove.
Then, of course, I squeezed her hand,
Talked about my wasted life;
'Ah! if I could only win
Some true woman for my wife,
How I'd love her--work for her!
Hand in hand through life we'd walk--
No one ever cared for me--'
Takes a girl--that kind of talk.
Then, you know, I used my eyes--
She believed me, every word--
Said I 'mustn't talk so'--Jove!
Such a voice you never heard.
Gave me some symbolic flower,--
'Had a meaning, oh, _so_ sweet,'--
Don't know where it is, I'm sure;
Must have dropped it in the street.
How I spooned!--And she--ha! ha!--
Well, I know it wasn't right--
But she pitied me so much
That I--kissed her--pass a light."