LATER. Great suffering through the night-- A stinging one. Our heedless boys Were nipped like blossoms. Some dozen Hapless wounded men were frozen. During day being struck down out of sight, And help-cries drowned in roaring noise, They were left just where the skirmish shifted-- Left in dense underbrush now-drifted. Some, seeking to crawl in crippled plight, So stiffened--perished. Yet in spite Of pangs for these, no heart is lost. Hungry, and clothing stiff with frost, Our men declare a nearing sun Shall see the fall of Donelson. And this they say, yet not disown The dark redoubts round Donelson, And ice-glazed corpses, each a stone-- A sacrifice to Donelson; They swear it, and swerve not, gazing on A flag, deemed black, flying from Donelson. Some of the wounded in the wood Were cared for by the foe last night, Though he could do them little needed good, Himself being all in shivering plight. The rebel is wrong, but human yet; He’s got a heart, and thrusts a bayonet. He gives us battle with wondrous will-- The blufff’s a perverted Bunker Hill._ The stillness stealing through the throng The silent thought and dismal fear revealed; They turned and went, Musing on right and wrong And mysteries dimly sealed-- Breasting the storm in daring discontent; The storm, whose black flag showed in heaven, As if to say no quarter there was given To wounded men in wood, Or true hearts yearning for the good-- All fatherless seemed the human soul. But next day brought a bitterer bowl-- On the bulletin-board this stood;