Flamed the canister-fire from the gunners of Hays and of Gibbon.

Blending, the sheeted blaze of the heavily-volleying muskets

Suddenly fringed the front, from the regiments crouching expectant:

Almost with awe they awaited the furious onset of foemen

Tried in the five-fold fire, and from hell undaunted emerging.

Waited not long: with the crash of answering volley for volley,

Raising the yell of the charge, wild as the howl of the wolf-pack,

Surged up out of the smoke the first of the lean tanned faces,

Teeth half-bared as in joy, and the sunken eyes savagely gleaming

Under the old gray brims and the slant of the battered visors.