| |
| HO! pony. Down the lonely road | |
| Strike now your cheeriest pace! | |
| The woods on fire do not burn higher | |
| Than burns my anxious face; | |
| Far have you sped, but all this night | 5 |
| Must feel my nervous spur; | |
| If we be late, the world must wait | |
| The tidings we aver:— | |
| To home and hamlet, town and hearth, | |
| To thrill child, mother, man, | 10 |
| I carry to the waiting North | |
| Great news from Sheridan! | |
| |
| The birds are dead among the pines, | |
| Slain by the battle fright, | |
| Prone in the road the steed reclines | 15 |
| That never reached the fight; | |
| Yet on we go,—the wreck below | |
| Of many a tumbled wain,— | |
| By ghastly pools where stranded mules | |
| Die, drinking of the rain; | 20 |
| With but my list of killed and missed | |
| I spur my stumbling nag, | |
| To tell of death at many a tryst, | |
| But victory to the flag! | |
| |
| “Halt! who comes there? The countersign!”— | 25 |
| “A friend.”—“Advance! The fight,— | |
| How goes it, say?”—“We won the day!”— | |
| “Huzza! Pass on!”—“Good-night!”— | |
| And parts the darkness on before, | |
| And down the mire we tramp, | 30 |
| And the black sky is painted o’er | |
| With many a pulsing camp; | |
| O’er stumps and ruts, by ruined huts, | |
| Where ghosts look through the gloam,— | |
| Behind my tread I hear the dead | 35 |
| Follow the news toward home! | |
| |
| The hunted souls I see behind, | |
| In swamp and in ravine, | |
| Whose cry for mercy thrills the wind | |
| Till cracks the sure carbine; | 40 |
| The moving lights, which scare the dark, | |
| And show the trampled place | |
| Where, in his blood, some mother’s bud | |
| Turns up his young, dead face; | |
| The captives spent, whose standards rent | 45 |
| The conqueror parades, | |
| As at the Five Forks roads arrive | |
| The General’s dashing aides. | |
| |
| O wondrous Youth! through this grand ruth | |
| Runs my boy’s life its thread; | 50 |
| The General’s fame, the battle’s name, | |
| The rolls of maimed and dead | |
| I bear, with my thrilled soul astir, | |
| And lonely thoughts and fears, | |
| And am but History’s courier | 55 |
| To bind the conquering years; | |
| A battle-ray, through ages gray | |
| To light to deeds sublime, | |
| And flash the lustre of this day | |
| Down all the aisles of Time! | 60 |
| |
| Ho! pony,—’t is the signal gun | |
| The night-assault decreed; | |
| On Petersburg the thunderbolts | |
| Crash from the lines of Meade; | |
| Fade the pale, frightened stars o’erhead, | 65 |
| And shrieks the bursting air; | |
| The forest foliage, tinted red, | |
| Grows ghastlier in the glare; | |
| Though in her towers, reached her last hours, | |
| Rocks proud Rebellion’s crest— | 70 |
| The world may sag, if but my nag | |
| Get in before the rest! | |
| |
| With bloody flank, and fetlocks dank, | |
| And goad, and lash, and shout— | |
| Great God! as every hoof-beat falls | 75 |
| A hundred lives beat out! | |
| As weary as this broken steed | |
| Reels down the corduroys, | |
| So, weary, fight for morning light | |
| Our hot and grimy boys; | 80 |
| Through ditches wet, o’er parapet | |
| And guns barbette, they catch | |
| The last, lost breach; and I,—I reach | |
| The mail with my despatch! | |
| |
| Sure it shall speed, the land to read, | 85 |
| As sped the happiest shell! | |
| The shot I send strike the world’s end; | |
| This tells my pony’s knell; | |
| His long race run, the long war done, | |
| My occupation gone,— | 90 |
| Above his bier, prone on the pier, | |
| The vultures fleck the dawn. | |
| Still, rest his bones where soldiers dwell, | |
| Till the Long Roll they catch. | |
| He fell the day that Richmond fell, | 95 |
| And took the first despatch! | |
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