Then, while the bullets whistled thick, And hidden batteries boomed and shelled, “Charge bayonets!” the colonel yelled; “Battalion forward,—double quick!”
With even slopes of bayonets Advanced—a dazzling, threatening crest— Right toward the rebels’ hidden nest, The dark blue, living billow sets.
The color-guard was at my side; I heard the color-sergeant groan; I heard the bullet crush the bone; I might have touched him as he died.
The life-blood spouted from his mouth And sanctified the wicked land; Of martyred saviors what a band Has suffered to redeem the South!
I had no malice in my mind; I only cried: “Close up! guide right!” My single purpose in the fight Was steady march with eyes aligned.
I glanced along the martial rows, And marked the soldiers’ eyeballs burn; Their eager faces hot and stern,— The wrathful triumph on their brows.
The traitors saw; they reeled and fled: Fear-stricken, gray-clad multitudes Streamed wildly toward the covering woods, And left us victory and their dead.
Once more the march, the tiresome plain, The Father River fringed with dykes, Gray cypresses, palmetto spikes, Bayous and swamps and yellowing canes;
With here and there plantations rolled In flowers, bananas, orange groves, Where laugh the sauntering negro droves, Reposing from the task of old;
And rarer, half-deserted towns, Devoid of men, where women scowl, Avoiding us as lepers foul With sidling gait and flouting gowns.