Classic Poem

Out across the waste of prairie,
Soft savannas, uplands airy,
Ragged gulches tracked by no man;
Rocky passes grim and hoar,
With the phantom of a foeman
Ever flitting on before,
Rode they seventy miles and more.

Home behind, but hope within them;
Strifes ahead, and strength to win them;
Full of life and dauntless spirit,
Eager for the prize of merit,
Ringing out a pleasant tune
In the merry sun of June,
Weapons flashing, clanging, clashing,
Banner floating far and free,—
Rode the Seventh Cavalry.

Seventy miles—their steeds were jaded,
And the glory waned and faded,
As the staring sun, unshaded,
Drained their spirits more and more.
Listless grew their mien, and haggard,
Backward trailed the troopers laggard,
And the column almost staggered
As it slowly onward bore.
All around the cactus thickets
Stood, presenting thorny pickets,

And the hillocks high and lonely
Beckoned on and on, but only
Opened an endless way
To the far bluff-lands gray.
Never a note of bird
In the dull march was heard;
Never a streamlet sang;
Never a wild deer sprang;
All, all was weariness and disarray.

Sudden as start the quickened dead,
Rouses every drooping head.
Every pulse is madly thrilling,
Every voice the message shrilling—
Swift it speeds from front to rear—
That at last the foe is near.
Yonder, mounted, on the hill,
Sits the leader strong and still,
One hand resting on the mane,
One hand pointing to the plain,
His face turned backward glowing,
His sunlit hair outflowing:
Oh, grand chivalric bearing!
Oh, heart that died in daring!

Over a line of blue
Where the river wound its way,
Under the trees wherethrough
The sunlight shot its ray,
In the lap of the valley gay
The Indian city lay,—
A city to move in a night,
A city of pole and tent,

That had dropped like a bird from its flight
On the heart of the continent.
Full four miles it spread,
Flapping with blankets red
That were given to purchase peace
From a war which never shall cease
While the Sioux and the white man meet.
And on the ground underfeet
Lay the ruthless spoils and pillage
Of many a border village,
And many a scalp-lock bright,
Won in the dead of night,
Danced in the air overhead.

The cavalry shouted again,
And they dashed from the hill to the plain.
Tired sinews grew strong with the rush.
As they burst the thick hedges of brush,
Rattling down, scattering stones left and right
Like sparkles struck out in the night.

The scabbards swung loose at their sides,
Clattered loudly on leather and hides.
The carbines that swayed at their backs,
The whirlwind of dust in their tracks,
The blades that flashed out in the sun,
And the beat of the feet on the rock,
As it rang with the clang and the shock,
And the peal of the steel on the stone!

The pebbles sped lightly before
As they smote on the silvery shore.
From pastern and fetlock and hoof
The spray-drops flew outward like rain,
As it flies from the edge of the roof,
As it splashes from panel and pane.
Saddle-deep in the ford,
With revolver and sword,
They were plunging right onward amain.

Suddenly all the woodlands hoar
Were filled with an infernal roar,
Which, rising more and more and more,
Appalled the invaders' ear,
With yell and whoop and shriek and cry,
And sounds of discord wild and high,
While every open space of sky
Hell's portal seemed, that shocked the eye
With hideous shapes of fear.
For every tree-trunk leaped to life
With painted Sioux and scalping-knife,
And rifle poised with care.
Up from the sedgy bank they start,
Out from the thicket's treacherous heart,
The boughs strange fruitage bear.
On either side, above, below,
The stream swarms with the howling foe,
The river boils with lead;
And many a trooper, smitten down
By sudden bolt through breast or crown,
Drops headlong to its bed.
Small time to reckon friends or foes,
A countless horde the front enclose,
With brandished tomahawk and spear
A host come sweeping on our rear—
Let dead men guard the dead!
Ride for life, ride for life!
Sink the spur; ply the knife;
Urge them on, urge them on—
'Tis their last race they run.
How the balls whistle by!
Knotted brow, staring eye!
Did he fall?—Look not back,
There are fiends on the track.
And they gain—ah, they gain!
How they skim o'er the plain!
How they crowd left and right!
And in front, what a sight!
All is lost; cease the flight.

They circled round the little hill;
They wheeled about, and then sat still,
With iron hand and iron will,—
Each in his company.
A welded ring for woe or weal,
A ring of horse and man and steel
And lightning-flash and thunder-peal,
Stood the Seventh Cavalry.

Round them and round a host of Sioux,
With taunting yell and wild halloo
And tossing spears and blankets, flew,—
Whirlwind of devilry!
Now stretched beside the tossing mane,
Now all astart with sudden pain,
Now crashing madly o'er the plain
Straight at their enemy.

The carbines flashed around the line,
As bursts the blaze from mountain pine,
Or the red leaping of the mine
Glares on the scenery.
Three thousand rifles answering rang,
The hurtling chaos inward sprang,
Sabres swooped out with clash and clang,
Sang the steel savagely.

Firm to the last, they fought and fell,
While round them, o'er them, broke the swell
Of that triumphant sea of hell,
Smiting relentlessly.
Three hundred corses gleaming white
In glare of noon and gloom of night,
With eyeballs staring broad and bright—
Lo, the Seventh Cavalry!