MISS EDITH MAKES IT PLEASANT FOR BROTHER JACK MISS EDITH MAKES ANOTHER FRIEND WHAT MISS EDITH SAW FROM HER WINDOW ON THE LANDING NOTES POEMS I. NATIONAL JOHN BURNS OF GETTYSBURG Have you heard the story that gossips tell Of Burns of Gettysburg?--No? Ah, well: Brief is the glory that hero earns, Briefer the story of poor John Burns. He was the fellow who won renown,-- The only man who didn't back down When the rebels rode through his native town; But held his own in the fight next day, When all his townsfolk ran away. That was in July sixty-three, The very day that General Lee, Flower of Southern chivalry, Baffled and beaten, backward reeled From a stubborn Meade and a barren field. I might tell how but the day before John Burns stood at his cottage door, Looking down the village street, Where, in the shade of his peaceful vine, He heard the low of his gathered kine, And felt their breath with incense sweet; Or I might say, when the sunset burned The old farm gable, he thought it turned The milk that fell like a babbling flood Into the milk-pail red as blood! Or how he fancied the hum of bees Were bullets buzzing among the trees. But all such fanciful thoughts as these Were strange to a practical man like Burns, Who minded only his own concerns, Troubled no more by fancies fine Than one of his calm-eyed, long-tailed kine,-- Quite old-fashioned and matter-of-fact, Slow to argue, but quick to act. That was the reason, as some folk say, He fought so well on that terrible day. And it was terrible. On the right Raged for hours the heady fight, Thundered the battery's double bass,-- Difficult music for men to face While on the left--where now the graves Undulate like the living waves That all that day unceasing swept Up to the pits the rebels kept-- Round shot ploughed the upland glades, Sown with bullets, reaped with blades; Shattered fences here and there Tossed their splinters in the air; The very trees were stripped and bare; The barns that once held yellow grain Were heaped with harvests of the slain; The cattle bellowed on the plain, The turkeys screamed with might and main, And brooding barn-fowl left their rest With strange shells bursting in each nest.