Reunion
Captain Thomas F. Winthrop.
[Written for the Eighteenth Reunion of the Nineteenth Massachusetts Infantry, held in Cambridge, Aug. 28, 1888.] The Southern hills no longer wear—Like jewels on their breezy crests—
A thousand camp fires, marking where
In night bivouac, an army rests;
The night wind gently sweeping past,
To all the sound of war is dumb,
It echoes not the bugle blast,
Nor the loud voice of boisterous drum.
The Southern woods no longer hide
The battery masked, the ambushed files;
The cavalry no longer ride
With clanking sabres down their aisles,
In deadly conflict to engage;
No longer from their battle lines,
Beneath their dark and cool umbrage
Amidst their green and tangled vines.
The Southern fields no longer bear
Their crops of burnished, bristling steel;
The flowers of peace are blooming fair
In ruts made by the cannon's wheel.
The trenches' long and curtained lines,
Are filled again with yellow clay,
The shadows of the solemn pines
Fall over levelled forts today.
And we who bore the battle brunt
In those sad days, so far away;
Who kept the old flag at the front,
Are growing old, and worn, and gray;
The vigor of those days has flown,
And less elastic is the tread,
The ravages of time are shown
In furrowed face, and whitened head.
[453] But to the past our hearts are true,
Its glorious mem'ries with us stay;
Though we who wore the loyal blue
Are putting on time's sombre gray;
And still with manly, loyal pride,
Those days of battle we recall,
When, 'gainst the waves of treason's tide,
We stood, a firm, unyielding wall.
We still have warmth of heart for those
Who mustered 'neath our colors bright
Who shared with us the camp's repose,
Or touched our elbows in the fight;
And who still live to tell the tale
Of march and camp, their joys and fears;
For them our love shall never fail,
Dear comrades of those battle years.
We tried their friendship by the test
Of fire and smoke of battle plain;
In charge against the cannoned crest,
On fields where bullets beat like rain;
On many a hard and weary tramp,
In bivouac on the frozen ground,
In quiet of the winter camp,
When cup, and song, and joke went round.
And in reunion once again
With old companions battle tried,
Our thoughts revive the long campaign
And scenes, where we stood side by side;
We hear the martial strains once more;
We don our uniforms of blue;
We see again the flags we bore
We hear from lips we love, adieu;
We leave our plows in furrowed field,
To idly rust 'midst tangled weeds;
We go the tools of war to wield,
Responsive to our country's needs;
We leave behind us fields unsown;
We go to till the fields of death,
Watered with blood, and bullet mown;
Scorched with the heated cannon's breath.
[454] By Potomac's willowy shore
We form our primal battle line;
We hear the guns of Yorktown roar;
O'er West Point see the sun decline.
The Chickahominy we cross,
On Fair Oaks' field we join the fray;
We mourn the gallant Warner's loss,
And all who fell that sad June day.
Across the dark peninsula
We march to reach the James's shore;
We see again the smoke of war
Hang over Glendale's field of gore;
The lapse of time has not concealed
The faces of our comrades brave,
Who on Antietam's gun-swept field
Their noble lives to Freedom gave.
At Fredericksburg the boats we man,
Under the fire from trench and slope,
And, with the Seventh Michigan,
We form once more ‘The forlorn hope.’
On Gettysburg's famed heights we stand,
And form the long, thin line of blue,
Whose courage high, and valor grand,
The fiery Pickett's charge o'erthrew.
All through the gloomy Wilderness,
In rough dug graves we leave our dead;
At Spottsylvania, back we press
The line of gray, by Stuart led.
Cold Harbor's flaming cannon boom,
And thin our weak and shattered lines;
And comrades fall, and find a tomb
Amidst Deep Bottom's tangled vines.
At Petersburg we stand again
Where strong redoubts the hillsides crown;
We see beyond the intrenched plain
The lofty steeples of the town.
Disaster at Reams' Station came,
When from its trenches we are hurled;
On Appomattoxa field of fame
We see the flag of treason furled.
[455] And from war's sad and gory fields,
With tattered banners borne above,
With all the pride that vict'ry yields,
We homeward march, to those we love.
For us the toilsome march is o'er,
The picket watch, the night bivouac;
The roll of drum will never more
Arouse us for the foe's attack.
And as we clasp the hands today,
And old familiar faces greet,
Remembered are those far away,
Whose hearts are with us while we meet.
Nor unforgotten those who fell,
And sleep today in sunny lands;
On breezy hill, in quiet dell,
In graves dug by their comrades' hands.
They were as noble, brave and true
As ever followed noisy drum;
Their silent ranks pass in review,
With noiseless step, and voices dumb.
Brave Howe is riding at their head,
Tall and graceful, but ashy pale,
Just as he looked when, cold and dead,
We dug his grave at sad Glendale.
Another rides with that silent host—
Boyd, the hero of many fields—
Who bravely fell at duty's post,
Just as the foe the contest yields.
And there George Batchelder we see,
Gentle and true, and bravest of men,
And there steps gallant David Lee,
And Mumford's manly form we ken.
Newcomb is there, with thoughtful face,
In that battalion weird and vast;
And brave Tom Claffy has a place,
And valiant Thompson marches past.
There with the men he led in fight,
The handsome Ferris moves along;
There's Donath, with his ways polite,
And Robinson is with the throng.
[456] Three hundred of our bravest men,
Who fell on Southern battle plains,
Or yielded life in prison pen,
That silent host of death contains.
We see their faces as of old,
We reach for hands we may not clasp;
We nevermore can them enfold
Within our warm and friendly grasp.
But deep within our hearts we hold
Remembrance of our gallant dead;
And all the scenes of war unfold
And clear before our vision spread.
Our proudest boast will ever be—
While in life's march our footsteps lag—
That in the war for liberty,
We followed the Nineteenth's flag.
St. Louis, Mo., Aug. 25, 1888.
