I READ last night of the Grand Review | |
| In Washington’s chieftest avenue— | |
| Two Hundred Thousand men in blue, | |
| I think they said was the number,— | |
| Till I seemed to hear their trampling feet, | 5 |
| The bugle blast and the drum’s quick beat, | |
| The clatter of hoofs in the stony street, | |
| The cheers of people who came to greet, | |
| And the thousand details that to repeat | |
| Would only my verse encumber,— | 10 |
| Till I fell in a revery, sad and sweet, | |
| And then to a fitful slumber. | |
| When, lo! in a vision I seemed to stand | |
| In the lonely Capitol. On each hand | |
| Far stretched the portico; dim and grand | 15 |
| Its columns ranged, like a martial band | |
| Of sheeted spectres whom some command | |
| Had called to a last reviewing. | |
| |
| And the streets of the city were white and bare, | |
| No footfall echoed across the square; | 20 |
| But out of the misty midnight air | |
| I heard in the distance a trumpet blare, | |
| And the wandering night-winds seemed to bear | |
| The sound of a far tattooing. | |
| |
| Then I held my breath with fear and dread; | 25 |
| For into the square, with a brazen tread, | |
| There rode a figure whose stately head | |
| O’erlooked the review that morning, | |
| That never bowed from its firm-set seat | |
| When the living column passed its feet, | 30 |
| Yet now rode steadily up the street | |
| To the phantom bugle’s warning: | |
| |
| Till it reached the Capitol square, and wheeled, | |
| And there in the moonlight stood revealed | |
| A well-known form that in state and field | 35 |
| Had led our patriot sires; | |
| Whose face was turned to the sleeping camp, | |
| Afar through the river’s fog and damp, | |
| That showed no flicker, nor waning lamp, | |
| Nor wasted bivouac fires. | 40 |
| |
| And I saw a phantom army come, | |
| With never a sound of fife or drum, | |
| But keeping time to a throbbing hum | |
| Of wailing and lamentation: | |
| The martyred heroes of Malvern Hill, | 45 |
| Of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville, | |
| The men whose wasted figures fill | |
| The patriot graves of the nation. | |
| |
| And there came the nameless dead,—the men | |
| Who perished in fever-swamp and fen, | 50 |
| The slowly-starved of the prison-pen; | |
| And, marching beside the others, | |
| Came the dusky martyrs of Pillow’s fight, | |
| With limbs enfranchised and bearing bright: | |
| I thought—perhaps ’twas the pale moonlight— | 55 |
| They looked as white as their brothers! | |
| |
| And so all night marched the Nation’s dead, | |
| With never a banner above them spread, | |
| Nor a badge, nor a motto brandished; | |
| No mark—save the bare uncovered head | 60 |
| Of the silent bronze Reviewer; | |
| With never an arch save the vaulted sky; | |
| With never a flower save those that lie | |
| On the distant graves—for love could buy | |
| No gift that was purer or truer. | 65 |
| |
| So all night long swept the strange array; | |
| So all night long, till the morning gray, | |
| I watch’d for one who had passed away, | |
| With a reverent awe and wonder,— | |
| Till a blue cap waved in the lengthening line, | 70 |
| And I knew that one who was kin of mine | |
| Had come; and I spake—and lo! that sign | |
| Awakened me from my slumber. | |
| |
