JOHN BURNS, OF GETTYSBURG.
And stand up with Emanuel, to show me how he's growin',
And smile as I have saw her 'fore she put her mournin' on.
And I want to see the Samples, on the old lower Eighty,
Where John, our oldest boy, he was took and buried-for
His own sake and Katy's-and I want to cry with Katy,
As she reads all his letters over, writ from the war.
What's in all this grand life and high situation,
And nary pink for hollyhawk bloomin' at the door?
Let's go a-visitin' back to Griggsby Station-
Back where we used to be so happy and so pore.
JOHN BURNS, OF GETTYSBURG.
HAVE you heard the story that gossips tell
Of Burns of Gettysburg?—No? Ah, well:
Brief is the glory that hero earns,
Briefer the story of poor John Burns:
He was the fellow who won renown,—
The only man who didn't back down
When the rebels rode through his native town:
But held his own in the fight next day,
When all his townsfolk ran away.
That was in July, sixty-three,
The very day that General Lee,
Flower of Southern chivalry,
Baffled and beaten, backward reeled
From a stubborn Meade and a barren field.
I might tell how, but the day before,
John Burns stood at his cottage door,
Looking down the village street,
Where, in the shade of his peaceful vine,
He heard the low of his gathered kine,
And felt their breath with incense sweet;
Or I might say when the sunset burned
The old farm gable, he thought it turned
The milk that fell, in a babbling flood
Into the milk-pail, red as blood!
Or how he fancied the hum of bees
Were bullets buzzing among the trees.
But all such fanciful thoughts as these
Were strange to a practical man like Burns,
Who minded only his own concerns,
Troubled no more by fancies fine
Than one of his calm-eyed, long-tailed kine.
Quite old-fashioned and matter-of-fact,
Slow to argue, but quick to act.
That was the reason, as some folks say,
He fought so well on that terrible day.
And it was terrible. On the right
Raged for hours the heavy fight,
Thundered the battery's double bass,—
Difficult music for men to face;
While on the left-where now the graves
Undulate like the living waves
That all that day unceasing swept
Up to the pits the rebels kept-
Round-shot ploughed the upland glades,
Sown with bullets, reaped with blades;
Shattered fences here and there
Tossed their splinters in the air;
The very trees were stripped and bare;
The barns that once held yellow grain
Were heaped with harvests of the slain;
The cattle bellowed on the plain,
The turkeys screamed with might and main,
And brooding barn-fowl left their rest,
With strange shells bursting in each nest.
Just where the tide of battle turns,
Erect and lonely stood old John Burns.
How do you think the man was dressed?
He wore an ancient long buff vest,
Yellow as saffron,-but his best;
And, buttoned over his manly breast,
JOHN BURNS, OF GETTYSBURG.
Was a bright blue coat, with rolling collar,
And large gilt buttons,-size of a dollar,-
With tails that the country-folk called "swaller."
He wore a broad-brimmed, bell-crowned hat,
White as the locks on which it sat.
Never had such a sight been seen
For forty years on the village green,
Since old John Burns was a country beau
And went to the "quiltings" long ago.
Close at his elbows all that day,
Veterans of the Peninsula,
Sunburnt and bearded, charged away;
And striplings, downy of lip and chin,-
Clerks that the Home Guard mustered in,-
Glanced, as they passed, at the hat he wore,
Then at the rifle his right hand bore;
And hailed him, from out their youthful lore,
With scraps of a slangy repertoire:
"How are you, White Hat?" "Put her through."
"Your head's level," and "Bully for you!"
Called him "Daddy,"-begged he'd disclose
The name of the tailor who made his clothes,
And what was the value he set on those;
While Burns, unmindful of jeer and scoff,
Stood there picking the rebels off,-
With his long brown rifle, and bell-crown hat,
And the swallow-tails they were laughing at.
"Twas but a moment, for that respect
Which clothes all courage their voices checked,
And something the wildest could understand
Spake in the old man's strong white hand;
And his corded throat, and the lurking frown
Of his eyebrows under his old bell-crown;
Until, as they gazed, there crept an awe
Through the ranks in whispers, and some men saw
In the antique vestments and long white hair,
The Past of the Nation in battle there;
And some of the soldiers since declare
That the gleam of his old white hat afar, Like the crested plume of the brave Navarre, That day was their oriflamme of war.
So raged the battle. You know the rest:
How the rebels, beaten and backward pressed,
Broke at the final charge and ran.
At which John Burns-a practical man-
Shouldered his rifle, unbent his brows,
And then went back to his bees and cows.
That is the story of old John Burns:
This is the moral the reader learns:
In fighting the battle, the question's whether
You'll show a hat that's white, or a feather!
WHEN the lessons and the tasks are all ended, And the school for the day is dismiss'd,
The little ones gather around me,
To bid me good-night and be kiss'd:
Oh, the little white arms that encircle
My neck in their tender embrace!
Oh, the smiles that are halos of heaven,
Shedding sunshine of love on my face!
And when they are gone I sit dreaming
Of my childhood, too lovely to last:
Of joy that my heart will remember
While it wakes to the pulse of the past,
Ere the world and its wickedness made me
A partner of sorrow and sin;
When the glory of God was about me,
And the glory of gladness within,
All my heart grows as weak as a woman's,
And the fountains of feeling will flow,
When I think of the paths steep and stony,
Where the feet of the dear ones must go;
Of the mountains of sin hanging o'er them,
Of the tempest of Fate blowing wild;
Oh, there's nothing on earth half so holy
As the innocent heart of a child!
They are idols of hearts and of households;
They are angels of God in disguise;
His sunlight still sleeps in their tresses,
His glory still gleams in their eyes;
Those truants from home and from heaven,
They have made me more manly and mild,
And I know now how Jesus could liken
The kingdom of God to a child.
I ask not a life for the dear ones,
All radiant, as others have done,
But that life may have just enough shadow
To temper the glare of the sun :
I would pray God to guard them from evil,
But my prayer would bound back to myself;
Ah! a seraph may pray for a sinner,
But a sinner must pray for himself.
The twig is so easily bended,
I have banished the rule and the rod;
I have taught them the goodness of knowledge,
They have taught me the goodness of God;
My heart is the dungeon of darkness,
Where I shut them for breaking a rule;
My frown is sufficient correction;
My love is the law of the school.
I shall leave the old house in the autumn,
To traverse its threshold no more;
Ah! how I shall sigh for the dear ones
That meet me each morn at the door!
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