Classic Poem

CAMPAIGN THE FIRST .

" Glory of War! But there — behold the end! "
The Old Soldier said: 'twas by his evening fire,
Winter the time: so saying, out he jerked
His wooden leg before him. With a look
Half comic, half pathetic, his gray head
Turned down askance, the pigtail out behind
Stiff with attention, saying nothing more,
He sat and eyed the horizontal peg.
Back home the stump he drew not, till with force
Disdainful deep into the slumbering fire
He struck the feruled toe, and poking roused
A cheery blaze, to light him at his work.
The unfinished skep is now upon his knee,
For June top-swarmers in his garden trim:
With twists of straw, and willow wattling thongs,
Crooning he wrought. The ruddy flickering fire
Played on his eyebrow shag, and thin fresh cheek,
Touching his varying eye with many a gleam.
His cot behind, soldierly clean and neat,
Gave back the light from many a burnished point.
His simple supper o'er, he reads The Book;
Then loads and mounts his pipe, puffing it slow,
Musing on days of yore, and battles old,
And many a friend and comrade dead and gone,
And vital ones, boughs of himself, cut off
From his dispeopled side, naked and bare.
Puffs short and hurried, puff on puff, betray
His swelling heart: up starts the Man, to keep
The Woman down: forth from his door he eyes
The frosty heaven — the moon and all the stars.
" Peace be with hearts that watch! " thus, heaven forgot,
And all its hosts, true to the veins of blood,
Thoughtful his spirit runs: — " 'Tis now the hour
When the lone matron, from her cottage door,
Looks for her spouse into the moonlit ways;
But hears no foot abroad in all the night.
Then turns she in: the tale of murder done,
In former days, by the blue forest's edge,
Which way he must return — why tarries he? —
Comes o'er her mind; up starting quick, she goes
To be assured that she has barred her door;
Then sits anew. Her little lamp of oil
Is all burnt out; the wasting embers whiten;
And the cat winks before the drowsy fire.
What sound was that? 'Tis but her own heart beating.
Up rises she again; her little ones
Are all asleep, she'll go and waken them,
And hear their voices in the eerie night;
But yet she pauses, loth to break their rest.
God send the husband and the father home!
" No one looks out for me in all this world,
No one have I to look for! Ah poor me!
Well, well! " he murmurs meek Turning, he locks
His lonely door, and stumps away to bed.