While our sturdy Continentals, in their dusty regimentals,
Drove their plumed and scarlet force, man and horse.
Beamed the sunlight fierce and torrid o’er the battle raging horrid,
Till, in faint exhaustion sinking, death was looked on as a boon;
Heat, and not a drop of water—heat, that won the race of slaughter,
Fewer far with bullets dying than beneath the sun of June;
Only ceased the terrible firing, with the Briton slow retiring,
As the sunbeams in the west sank to rest.
MOLLY PITCHER.