| |
| OUT of the focal and foremost fire, | |
| Out of the hospital walls as dire; | |
| Smitten of grape-shot and gangrene, | |
| (Eighteenth battle, and he sixteen!) | |
| Spectre! such as you seldom see, | 5 |
| Little Giffen, of Tennessee! | |
| |
| “Take him and welcome!” the surgeons said; | |
| Little the doctor can help the dead! | |
| So we took him; and brought him where | |
| The balm was sweet in the summer air; | 10 |
| And we laid him down on a wholesome bed,— | |
| Utter Lazarus, heel to head! | |
| |
| And we watched the war with abated breath,— | |
| Skeleton Boy against skeleton Death. | |
| Months of torture, how many such? | 15 |
| Weary weeks of the stick and crutch; | |
| And still a glint of the steel-blue eye | |
| Told of a spirit that would n’t die, | |
| |
| And didn’t. Nay, more! in death’s despite | |
| The crippled skeleton “learned to write.” | 20 |
| “Dear mother,” at first, of course; and then | |
| “Dear captain,” inquiring about the men. | |
| Captain’s answer: “Of eighty-and-five, | |
| Giffen and I are left alive.” | |
| |
| Word of gloom from the war, one day; | 25 |
| Johnson pressed at the front, they say. | |
| Little Giffen was up and away; | |
| A tear—his first—as he bade good-by, | |
| Dimmed the glint of his steel-blue eye. | |
| “I ’ll write, if spared!” There was news of the fight; | 30 |
| But none of Giffen.—He did not write. | |
| |
| I sometimes fancy that, were I king | |
| Of the princely Knights of the Golden Ring, | |
| With the song of the minstrel in mine ear, | |
| And the tender legend that trembles here, | 35 |
| I ’d give the best on his bended knee, | |
| The whitest soul of my chivalry, | |
| For “Little Giffen,” of Tennessee. | |
| |
