OUT of the focal and foremost fire,
Out of the hospital walls as dire;
Smitten of grape-shot and gangrene,
(Eighteenth battle, and he sixteen!)
Spectre such as you seldom see,
Little Giffen, of Tennessee!
"Take him and welcome!" the surgeons said;
Little the doctor can help the dead!
So we took him; and brought him where The balm was sweet in the summer air; And we laid him down on a wholesome bed,
Utter Lazarus, heel to head!
And did n't. Nay, more! in death's despite The crippled skeleton "learned to write." "Dear mother," at first, of course; and then
"Dear captain," inquiring about the men. Captain's answer: "Of eighty-and-five, Giffen and I are left alive."
Word of gloom from the war, one day;
Johnson pressed at the front, they say.
Little Giffen was up and away;
A tear his first as he bade good-by
Dimmed the glint of his steel-blue eye.
"I'll write, if spared!" There was news
of the fight;
But none of Giffen. He did not write.
I sometimes fancy that, were I king
Of the princely Knights of the Golden
Ring,
With the song of the minstrel in mine ear,
And the tender legend that trembles here,
I'd give the best on his bended knee,
The whitest soul of my chivalry,
For "Little Giffen," of Tennessee.
"But what and where are we? - what now
Souls on a globe that spins our lives away, A multitudinous world, where heaven and hell,
Strangely in battle met,
Their gonfalons have set.
"Dust though we are, and shall return to dust,
Yet, being born to battles, fight we must;
Under which ensign is our only choice.
We know to wage our best;
God only knows the rest.
"Then, since we see about us sin and dole, And some things good, why not, with hand and soul,
Wrestle and succor out of wrong and sorrow;
Grasping the swords of strife;
Making the most of life?
"Yea, all that we can wield is worth the end,
If sought as God's and man's most loyal friend;
Naked we come into the world, and take
Weapons of various skill
Let us not use them ill."
Down in the bleak December bay
The ghostly vessel stands away;
Her spars and halyards white with ice,
Under the dark December skies.
A hundred souls, in company,
Have left the vessel pensively, -
Have touched the frosty desert there,
And touched it with the knees of prayer.
And now the day begins to dip,
The night begins to lower
Over the bay, and over the ship
Mayflower.
Neither the desert nor the sea
Imposes rites: their prayers are free;
Danger and toil the wild imposes,
And thorns must grow before the roses.
And who are these? - and what distress
The savage-acred wilderness
On mother, maid, and child, may bring,
Beseems them for a fearful thing;
For now the day begins to dip,
The night begins to lower
Over the bay, and over the ship
Mayflower.
But Carver leads (in heart and health
A hero of the commonwealth)
The axes that the camp requires,
To build the lodge and heap the fires.
And Standish from his warlike store
Arrays his men along the shore,
Distributes weapons resonant,
And dons his harness militant;
For now the day begins to dip,
The night begins to lower
Over the bay, and over the ship
Mayflower;
And Rose, his wife, unlocks a chest -
She sees a Book, in vellum drest,
She drops a tear and kisses the tome,
Thinking of England and of home:
Might they the Pilgrims, there and
Ordained to do the work of men
Have seen, in visions of the air,
While pillowed on the breast of prayer (When now the day began to dip, The night began to lower
Over the bay, and over the ship
Mayflower),
The Canaan of their wilderness
A boundless empire of success;
And seen the years of future nights
Jewelled with myriad household lights;
And seen the honey fill the hive;
And seen a thousand ships arrive;
And heard the wheels of travel go;
It would have cheered a thought of woe,
When now the day began to dip,
The night began to lower
Over the bay, and over the ship
Mayflower.
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