Soldiers of the light

by Helen Gray Cone

III

Day crept wan on the world. ’Twas the hour when the birds in the branches

One after one awake, in the dewy cool and the dimness,

Small sweet voices of joy, praising the sunlight that shall be.

Silvery the hour, and a semblance of death in the birth of the morning;

Sacred the sunless hour; now rent, as the veil of the temple,

All that silver spell. In the dewy cool of the coverts

Sounded no voices of birds; but the whistling hiss of the bullet,

Ruffling volley on volley, and yell of the South, and the angry

Roar of the strong hurrah from the throats of the soldiers of Slocum,

There on the rough sheer steep, in the thick of the Culp’s Hill woodlands,

There on the rock-strewn plain, till the sun stared hot on the struggle,

Jealously battling to wrest, from the grasp of a blindfold victor,

Vantage but half discerned, and a foothold found in the darkness:

Brave was the blindfold victor, and fiercely he clung to his foothold;

Almost he groped to the prize, to the gleam of the hard white highway

On to Baltimore sweeping, the one sure outlet of safety;

Almost he chanced with his hand on the close-hoarded power of the powder:

Brave and blind, or beholding too late, on the plain and the hillside,

Seven vain hours he fought; then reeling let go the advantage,

Fell back panting and foiled. Once again in its rugged intrenchments

Rested the Corps of the Star; on the field rested many forever.

So sped the morn on the Right.