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.
