Джеймс Райдер Рэндалл (James Ryder Randall)

John W. Morton

I

Ringed with flame and sore beset,
Where gunboat and rifle fire met;
Where cannon blazed from water and land
Upon the Donelson Southern band,
A gallant lad of nineteen years,
A stranger to tremor and to fears,
Stood by a battery piece and shot
The first shell in that crater hot.

His captain, Porter, smitten down
Where all the volleyed thunders frown,
Shouted, when borne in pain away:
“John, don’t give up that gun, I say!”
“No! not while a man is left,” replied
The lad, in the flush of martial pride;
And he kept his word to the utter end,
While a man could live in that river bend.

“No prison for me,” grim Forrest said,
And thousands followed where he led.
But other thousands because
They bowed to Buckner’s word and laws.
Whelmed by the girdling Northern men,
They marched to the captive’s dismal den,
And the lad who fired the first gun past
Into that solitude sad and vast.

A few months more, and the daring boy
Breathed the air that the free enjoy.
A few months more, and he gayly went
Where dauntless Forrest pitched his tent.
Saluting the hero, he quickly gave
To the South’s own “bravest of the brave”
A paper that said he was to be
The Wizard’s Chief of Artillery.

A derisive smile swept over the face
Of the stern commander, in his place.
“What!” he growled, “are you to wield
Command of my guns in war’s fierce field?
Nonsense, boy, go grow a beard!”
And this was what the stripling heard.
But presently the Wizard’s brow
Grew calm. “I’ll try you, anyhow,”
He said, and from that setting sun
Morton and Forrest were as one.

Nigh four tremendous, bloody years,
Full of combat, smiles, and tears;
O’er miles of land in battles grand,
Forrest and Morton went hand in hand.
With sword and pistol the Wizard slew,
While Morton’s guns mowed men in blue.
If mortal man could ever have freed
The South from the foeman’s grasp and greed,
That man was Forrest, but we see
It was not destined so to be.

II.

Long years have gone, the grass is spread
Above the bivouacs of the dead.
The mighty Wizard’s wand is still
Like his heart; but from every Southern hill,
And mount and stream and vale bedight,
With sun and moon and star alight,
He lives in glorious deeds, alway,
Baffling the onset of decay.

The lad who made the cannon roar
Survives on Life’s tumultuous shore.
His locks are silvered, but his brain
Burns with heroic throbs amain.
Gentle and kind, but valiant yet,
Forgiving, he cannot forget
The Cause he fought for, with his mate
Immortal, whatsoe’er its fate;
While from his great dark eyes there gleams
The orient of remembered dreams.

And now the old bard’s final rhyme
Invokes a blessing of Easter time,
Upon his people and home and race,
Like manna-dew of heavenly grace.
With higher aims, in war’s surcease,
Be thou allied with the Prince of Peace,
And never, henceforth, forget to be
“Soldier of Him who died for thee.”