Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848Various
General
Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848
Various
Literature -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals
The little band within the pickets, which Winchester had surrendered,
after being carried himself a prisoner into Proctor's camp, denied his
powers. They continued to hold the enemy at bay until they were
enabled to capitulate on honorable terms, which, nevertheless, Proctor
shamefully violated, by leaving the sick and wounded who were unable
to walk to the tomahawk of his allies. Butler, who was among the few
of the wounded who escaped the massacre, was marched through Canada to
Fort Niagara--suffering under his wound, and every privation--oppressed
with grief, hunger, fatigue, and the inclement cold of that desolate
region. Even here he forgot himself, and his mind wandered back to the
last night scene which he surveyed on the bloody shores of the River
Raisin. He gave up the heroic part and became the schoolboy again, and
commemorated his sorrows for his lost friends in verse, like some
passionate, heart-broken lover. These elegiac strains were never
intended for any but the eye of mutual friends, whose sympathies, like
his own, poured out tears with their plaints over the dead. We give
some of these lines of his boyhood, to show that the heroic youth had
a bosom not less kind than brave.
THE FIELD OF RAISIN.
The battle's o'er! the din is past,
Night's mantle on the field is cast;
The Indian yell is heard no more,
An silence broods o'er Erie's shore.
At this lone hour I go to tread
The field where valor vainly bled--
To raise the wounded warrior's crest,
Or warm with tears his icy breast;
To treasure up his last command,
And bear it to his native land.
It may one pulse of joy impart
To a fond mother's bleeding heart;
Or for a moment it may dry
The tear-drop in the widow's eye.
Vain hope, away! The widow ne'er
Her warrior's dying wish shall hear.
The passing zephyr bears no sigh,
No wounded warrior meets the eye--
Death is his sleep by Erie's wave,
Of Raisin's snow we heap his grave!
How many hopes lie murdered here--
The mother's joy, the father's pride,
The country's boast, the foeman's fear,
In wilder'd havoc, side by side.
Lend me, thou silent queen of night,
Lend me awhile thy waning light,
That I may see each well-loved form,
That sunk beneath the morning storm.
These lines are introductory to what may be considered a succession of
epitaphs on the personal friends whose bodies he found upon the field.
It would extend the extract too far to insert them. We can only add
the close of the poem, where he takes leave of a group of his young
comrades in Hart's company, who had fallen together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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