American War Ballads and Lyrics: A Collection of the Songs and Ballads of the Colonial Wars, the Revolution, the War of 1812-15, the War with Mexico, and the Civil War, Volume 1

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George Cary Eggleston
G. P. Putnam's sons, 1889 - American poetry - 504 pages

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Page 9 - He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat; Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant my feet! Our God is marching on.
Page 8 - MINE eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord : He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored ; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword : His truth is marching on. I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps : His day is marching on. I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel : "...
Page 95 - Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, But spare your country's flag," she said. A shade of sadness, a blush of shame, Over the face of the leader came; The nobler nature within him stirred To life at that woman's deed and word: "Who touches a hair of yon gray head Dies like a dog! March on!
Page 94 - Forty flags with their silver stars, Forty flags with their crimson bars, Flapped in the morning wind: the sun Of noon looked down, and saw not one.
Page 34 - The alarum of drums swept past, Or a bugle blast From the camp on the shore. Then far away to the south uprose A little feather of snow-white smoke, And we knew that the iron ship of our foes Was steadily steering its course To try the force Of our ribs of oak. Down upon us heavily runs, Silent and sullen, the floating fort ; Then comes a puff of smoke from her guns, And leaps the terrible death, With fiery breath, From each open port. We are not idle, but send her straight Defiance back in a full...
Page 10 - Potomac," they say. Except now and then a stray picket Is shot as he walks on his beat, to and fro, By a rifleman hid in the thicket. "Tis nothing; a private or two now and then Will not count in the news of the battle. Not an officer lost — only one of the men Moaning out, all alone, the death-rattle. All quiet along the Potomac...
Page 210 - Then fastened the meadow bars again. Under the willows, and over the hill, He patiently followed their sober pace ; The merry whistle for once was still, And something shadowed the sunny face. Only a boy ! and his father had said He never could let his youngest go ; Two already were lying dead Under the feet of the trampling foe.
Page 228 - By the flow of the inland river, Whence the fleets of iron have fled, Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver, Asleep are the ranks of the dead; Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day; Under the one, the Blue; Under the other, the Gray.
Page 72 - And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because The sight of the master compelled it to pause, With foam and with dust the black charger was gray; By the flash of his eye and the red nostril's play He seemed to the whole great army to say : 'I have brought you Sheridan all the way From Winchester down to save the day !' "Hurrah ! Hurrah, for Sheridan ! Hurrah ! Hurrah for horse and man!
Page 72 - Under his spurning feet the road Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed, And the landscape sped away behind Like an ocean flying before the wind; And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace ire, Swept on, with his wild eye full of fire.

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