C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
John Randolph Thompson (1823–1873)
Music in Camp
T
Where Rappahannock’s waters
Ran deeply crimsoned with the stain
Of battle’s recent slaughters.
In meads of heavenly azure;
And each dread gun of the elements
Slept in its hid embrasure.
No forest leaf to quiver,
And the smoke of the random cannonade
Rolled slowly from the river.
With cannon grimly planted,
O’er listless camp and silent town
The golden sunset slanted:
A strain—now rich, now tender;
The music seemed itself aflame
With day’s departing splendor.
Played measures brave and nimble,
Had just struck up, with flute and horn
And lively clash of cymbal.
Till, margined by its pebbles,
One wooded shore was blue with “Yanks,”
And one was gray with “Rebels.”
With movement light and tricksy,
Made stream and forest, hill and strand,
Reverberate with ‘Dixie.’
Slipped proudly o’er its pebbles,
But thrilled throughout its deepest flow
With yelling of the Rebels.
The trumpets pealed sonorous,
And ‘Yankee Doodle’ was the strain
To which the shore gave chorus.
To kiss the shining pebbles;
Loud shrieked the swarming Boys in Blue
Defiance to the Rebels.
Above the stormy riot;
No shout upon the evening rang,—
There reigned a holy quiet.
Poured o’er the glistening pebbles;
And silent now the Yankees stood,
And silent stood the Rebels.
That plaintive note’s appealing,
So deeply ‘Home, Sweet Home’ had stirred
The hidden founts of feeling.
As by the wand of fairy,
The cottage ’neath the live-oak trees,
The cabin by the prairie.
Bend in their beauty o’er him;
Seen through the tear-mist in his eyes,
His loved ones stand before him.
In April’s tearful weather,
The vision vanished, as the strain
And daylight died together.
Expressed in simplest numbers,
Subdued the sternest Yankee’s heart,
Made light the Rebel’s slumbers.
That bright, celestial creature,
Who still, ’mid war’s embattled lines,
Gave this one touch of Nature.