Poetry

THE LOST REGIMENT.

Joaquin Miller


  • The dying land cried; they heard her death-call,
  • These bent old men stopped, listened in tent;
  • Then rusty old muskets rushed down fron the wall,
  • And squirrel-guns gleamed in that regiment,
  • And grandsires marched, old muskets in hand
  • The last men left in the old Southland.

  • The gray grandsires! They were seen to reel,
  • Their rusty old muskets a wearisome load;
  • They marched, scarce tall as the cannon's wheel,
  • Marched stooping on up the corduroy road;
  • These gray old boys, all broken and bent,
  • Marched out, the gallant last regiment.

  • But oh! that march through the cypress trees,
  • When zest and excitement had died away!
  • That desolate march through the marsh to the knees
  • The gray moss mantling the battered and gray
  • These gray grandsires all broken and bent
  • The gray moss mantling the regiment.

  • The gray bent men and the mosses gray;
  • The dull dead gray of the uniform!
  • The dull dead skies, like to lead that day,
  • Dull, dead, heavy and deathly warm!
  • Oh, what meant more than the cypress meant,
  • With its mournful moss, to that regiment ?

  • That deadly march through the marshes deep!
  • That sultry day and the deeds in vain!
  • The rest on the cypress roots, the sleep
  • The sleeping never to rise again!
  • The rust on the guns; the rust and the rent
  • That dying and desolate regiment!

  • The muskets left leaning against the trees,
  • The cannon wheels clogged from the moss o'erhead,
  • The cypress trees bending on obstinate knees
  • As gray men kneeling by the gray men dead!
  • A lone bird rising, long legged and gray,
  • Slow rising and rising and drifting away.

  • The dank dead mosses gave back no sound,
  • The drums lay silent as the drummers there;
  • The sultry stillness it was so profound
  • You might have heard an unuttered prayer;
  • And ever and ever and far away,
  • Kept drifting that desolate bird in gray.

  • The long gray shrouds of that cypress wood,
  • Like veils that sweep where the gray nuns weep—
  • That cypress moss o'er the dankness deep,
  • Why, the cypress roots they were running blood;
  • And to right and to left lay an old man dead
  • A mourning cypress set foot and head.

  • 'Twas man hunting men in the wilderness there;
  • 'Twas man hunting man and hunting to slay,
  • But nothing was found but death that day,
  • And possibly God—and that bird in gray
  • Slow rising and rising and drifting away.

  • Now down in the swamp where the gray men fell
  • The fireflies volley and volley at night,
  • And black men belated are heard to tell
  • Of the ghosts in gray in a mimic fight
  • Of the ghosts of the gallant old men in gray
  • Who silently died in the swamp that day.