In glades they meet skull after skull Where pine-cones lay--the rusted gun, Green shoes full of bones, the mouldering coat And cuddled-up skeleton; And scores of such. Some start as in dreams, And comrades lost bemoan: By the edge of those wilds Stonewall had charged-- But the Year and the Man were gone. _At the height of their madness The night winds pause, Recollecting themselves; But no lull in these wars._ A gleam!--a volley! And who shall go Storming the swarmers in jungles dread? No cannon-ball answers, no proxies are sent-- They rush in the shrapnel’s stead. Plume and sash are vanities now-- Let them deck the pall of the dead; They go where the shade is, perhaps into Hades, Where the brave of all times have led. _There’s a dust of hurrying feet, Bitten lips and bated breath, And drums that challenge to the grave, And faces fixed, forefeeling death._ What husky huzzahs in the hazy groves-- What flying encounters fell; Pursuer and pursued like ghosts disappear In gloomed shade--their end who shall tell? The crippled, a ragged-barked stick for a crutch, Limp to some elfin dell-- Hobble from the sight of dead faces--white As pebbles in a well. _Few burial rites shall be; No priest with book and band Shall come to the secret place Of the corpse in the foeman’s land._ Watch and fast, march and fight--clutch your gun? Day-fights and night-fights; sore is the strees; Look, through the pines what line comes on? Longstreet slants through the hauntedness? ’Tis charge for charge, and shout for yell: Such battles on battles oppress-- But Heaven lent strength, the Right strove well, And emerged from the Wilderness. _Emerged, for the way was won; But the Pillar of Smoke that led Was brand-like with ghosts that went up Ashy and red._ None can narrate that strife in the pines, A seal is on it--Sabaean lore! Obscure as the wood, the entangled rhyme But hints at the maze of war-- Vivid glimpses or livid through peopled gloom, And fires which creep and char-- A riddle of death, of which the slain Sole solvers are. _Long they withhold the roll Of the shroudless dead. It is right; Not yet can we bear the flare Of the funeral light._ On the Photograph of a Corps Commander. Ay, man is manly. Here you see The warrior-carriage of the head, And brave dilation of the frame; And lighting all, the soul that led In Spottsylvaniaa’s charge to victory, Which justifies his fame. A cheering picture. It is good To look upon a Chief like this, In whom the spirit moulds the form. Here favoring Nature, oft remiss, With eagle mien expressive has endued A man to kindle strains that warm.