Many a stout Corps that went,
Full-ranked, from camp and tent,
And brought back a brigade;
Many a brave regiment,
That mustered only a squad.
The lost battalions,
That, when the fight went wrong,
Stood and died at their guns,—
The stormers steady and strong,
With their best blood that bought
Scrap, and ravelin, and wall,—
The companies that fought
Till a corporal's guard was all.
Many a valiant crew,
That passed in battle and wreck,—
Ah, so faithful and true!
They died on the bloody deck,
They sank in the soundless blue.
All the loyal and bold
That lay on a soldier's bier,—
The stretchers borne to the rear,
The hammocks lowered to the hold.
The shattered wreck we hurried,
In death-fight, from deck and port,—
The Blacks that Wagner buried—
That died in the Bloody Fort!
Comrades of camp and mess,
Left, as they lay, to die,
In the battle's sorest stress,
When the storm of fight swept by,—
They lay in the Wilderness,
Ah, where did they not lie?
In the tangled swamp they lay,
They lay so still on the sward!—
They rolled in the sick-bay,
Moaning their lives away—
They flushed in the fevered ward.
They rotted in Libby yonder,
They starved in the foul stockade—
Hearing afar the thunder
Of the Union cannonade!
But the old wounds all are healed,
And the dungeoned limbs are free,—
The Blue Frocks rise from the field,
The Blue Jackets out of the sea.