| |
| WAS there ever message sweeter | |
| Than that one from Malvern Hill, | |
| From a grim old fellow,—you remember? | |
| Dying in the dark at Malvern Hill. | |
| With his rough face turned a little, | 5 |
| On a heap of scarlet sand, | |
| They found him, just within the thicket, | |
| With a picture in his hand,— | |
| |
| With a stained and crumpled picture | |
| Of a woman’s aged face; | 10 |
| Yet there seemed to leap a wild entreaty, | |
| Young and living—tender—from the face | |
| When they flashed the lantern on it, | |
| Gilding all the purple shade, | |
| And stooped to raise him softly,— | 15 |
| “That ’s my mother, sir,” he said. | |
| |
| “Tell her”—but he wandered, slipping | |
| Into tangled words and cries,— | |
| Something about Mac and Hooker, | |
| Something dropping through the cries | 20 |
| About the kitten by the fire, | |
| And mother’s cranberry-pies; and there | |
| The words fell, and an utter | |
| Silence brooded in the air. | |
| |
| Just as he was drifting from them, | 25 |
| Out into the dark, alone, | |
| (Poor old mother, waiting for your message, | |
| Waiting with the kitten, all alone!) | |
| Through the hush his voice broke,—“Tell her— | |
| Thank you, Doctor—when you can, | 30 |
| Tell her that I kissed her picture, | |
| And wished I ’d been a better man.” | |
| |
| Ah, I wonder if the red feet | |
| Of departed battle-hours | |
| May not leave for us their searching | 35 |
| Message from those distant hours. | |
| Sisters, daughters, mothers, think you, | |
| Would your heroes now or then, | |
| Dying, kiss your pictured faces, | |
| Wishing they ’d been better men? | 40 |
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