There is hardly a stanza in the poem that does not contain some striking image. It moves on in the mournful cadence of a _miserere_:-- “The Sisterhood that was so sweet, The Starry System sphered complete, Which the mazed Orient used to greet, The Four and Thirty fallen Stars glimmer and glitter at her feet.” He published, January 1, 1863, as a carrier’s address in the Louisville _Journal_, “The Old Sergeant,” which Piatt believed to have been “the transcript of a real history, none of the names in it being fictitious, and the story being reported as exactly as possible from the lips of a Federal assistant surgeon named Austin, with whom Willson was acquainted at New Albany.” The poem appeared anonymously, and for some reason, which was never explained, Willson seemed reluctant at first to admit its authorship. It attracted wide attention. Gilmore relates that early in 1863, in the office of the _Atlantic Monthly_, he met Dr. Holmes, who held in his hand a copy of the Louisville _Journal_, containing “The Old Sergeant.” “Read that,” said he, “and tell me if it’s not the finest thing since the war began. Sit down and read it here; you might lose it if I let you take it away.” The ballad is found in “The Old Sergeant and Other Poems” (1867). It is a vivid narrative of sustained power and interest, deriving strength from the earnestness of the recital and the simple language, sometimes descending to army slang, of the soldier. The poem is historically accurate and is a fine celebration of the battle of Shiloh: “There was where Lew Wallace showed them he was of the canny kin, There was where old Nelson thundered, and where Rousseau waded in; There McCook sent ’em to breakfast, and we all began to win-- There was where the grapeshot took me, just as we began to win. “Now, a shroud of snow and silence over everything was spread; And but for this old blue mantle and the old hat on my head, I should not have even doubted, to this moment, I was dead-- For my footsteps were as silent as the snow upon the dead!”