Fear you the naked horrors of a war?
Then cherish peace, and take up arms no more.
For, if you fight, you must
Behold your brothers' dust
Unpityingly ground down
And mixed with blood and powder,
To write the annals of renown
That make a nation prouder!
VIII
All is quiet till one o'clock;
Then the hundred and fifty guns,
Metal loaded with metal in tons,
Massed by Lee, send out their shock.
And, with a movement magnificent,
Pickett, the golden-haired leader,
Thousands and thousands flings onward, as if he sent
Merely a meek interceder.
Steadily sure his division advances,
Gay as the light on its weapons that dances.
Agonized screams of the shell
The doom that it carries foretell:
Rifle-balls whistle, like sea-birds singing;
Limbs are severed, and souls set winging;
Yet Pickett's warriors never waver.
Show me in all the world anything braver
Than the bold sweep of his fearless battalions,
Three half-miles over ground unsheltered
Up to the cannon, where regiments weltered
Prone in the batteries' blast that raked
Swaths of men and, flame-tongued, drank
Their blood with eager thirst unslaked.
Pages:
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103