Poems : Medley and Palestina / by J.W. DeForest [electronic text]

CAMPAIGNING.

I

The war was weary long. How long and wearisome it was, That strife 'twixt valiant right and valiant wrong, 'Twixt anarchy and crystallizing laws! How weary, weary were the marches In lands where noontide parches The pulsing torrents of the veins! How many steaming plains, Now ashy waste, Now thick with honeyed canes, Our footfalls slowly paced From glaring rim to rim, While fever's vipers strayed

Through aching head and limb, And gnawing hunger preyed Till e'en that garish land grew dim! The poison-sucking moons Hung over black lagoons And poured their venom through the hazy night; The dawns were damp with blight, And all the golden-quivered noons Shot arrows glowing white That struck full many down in mortal swoons.

II

Yea, long and fearful was the strife. How many mighty champions, How many evil Titans, bounded From caves of Chaos and Affright To spend their savage life In wrestling with the shining ones Who guard the fortress of the right! How many cruel clarions sounded More hortative and loud Than Roland's trumpet when he bowed To death in Roncesvale! I heard all notes that wail Through battle's vibrant scale. I heard the dying when they sighed Like wearied children pitiful and meek; I heard the wounded when they cried Their wild, astonished shriek, The cry of one who feels his pulses fail And all his strength turn weak

Because beneath him seems to slide And open swiftly wide A black and bottomless abyss.

III

I heard the bullet's hiss, Incessant, sharp and fell, The keenest, deadliest note That bursts from battle's throat; The piercing screech and jarring whirr Of grape and canister; And flying from afar, the shell With changeful, throbbing, husky yell, A demon tiger, leaping miles To spread his iron claws And tear the bleeding files; While oft arose the charging cry Of men who battled for a glorious cause And died when it was beautiful to die.

IV

In long pursuits, When every blistered footstep seemed to bleed, When reeling ranks outwore the very brutes And every furlong showed its dying steed, How strange, with aching eyes to scan The flying dust of cavalry, (The horsemen of our van) That up and down the roadways ran Untiringly as billows of the sea, Retreating and attacking, coming, going,

As wayward as a firefly's glowing, While here and there A sabre's glare Revealed that Death was busy there. Strange, too, again, Athwart some scintillating plain, To see advance through tremulous rays The solemn, columned haze Of mighty marchings, visible afar, The dim afreets of war, The gliding pillar-clouds of Death's simoom, The tempest-demons, charged with doom, That over war's Sahara swarm, Menacing, monstrous, climbing skies And hasting to descend in storm Of crashing ranks and booming batteries.

V

In middle night, In dewy silence, ocean-deep, The hundred-pounder on the bastioned height Awakened from its ponderous sleep And poured with all its iron might A lion-like, a grandly solemn roar That boomed and shuddered on From horizon to horizon Until the lofty frame Of darkness shook from roof to floor. Then rose the bomb a-sky, A lurid, crimson, bloody fiend of flame That mounted swiftly while that awful cry

Along the rocking welkin fled. It clomb, it soared, it curved its flight, It paused one fearful moment overhead, A meteor as red as hell; Then burst in ruins deadly white, In ghastly shatterings of livid light, Magnificent, sublime and fell; While, clanging like a Pandemonic bell, The great explosion shuddered on From horizon to horizon; And once again the monstrous dome of night Reeled outward from the roar And shook from awful peak to boundless floor.

VI

Yea, fearful were the sights and sounds T'hat swept the war's wide bounds. It seemed at times as though we trod Another and most fearful world, Unknown perchance to God, Or else long since to ruin hurled. Yet never did our spirit shrink; We marched and fought with steady heart; We marched to Hades' brink Without a coward start. Our cause was good, Befitting manhood's noblest mood; And it was noble, too, to brave The great unknown beyond the grave. All this was godlike, worthy all That we had power to give,

Though in the giving we should fall Sore wounded; yea, should cease to live.