THE OLD SERGEANT.

JANUARY 1, 1863.

THE Carrier cannot sing to-day the ballads
With which he used to go,

Rhyming the glad rounds of the happy New Years
That are now beneath the snow:

For the same awful and portentous Shadow
That overcast the earth,

And smote the land last year with desolation,
Still darkens every hearth.

And the Carrier hears Beethoven's mighty death-march
Come up from every mart;

And he hears and feels it breathing in his bosom,
And beating in his heart.

And to-day, a scarred and weather-beaten veteran
Again he comes along,

To tell the story of the Old Year's struggles
In another New Year's song.

And the song is his, but not so with the story;
For the story, you must know,

Was told in prose to Assistant-Surgeon Austin,
By a soldier of Shiloh:

By Robert Burton, who was brought up on the Adams
With his death-wound in his side;

And who told the story to the Assistant-Surgeon,
On the same night that he died.

But the singer feels it will better suit the ballad,
If all should deem it right.

To tell the story as if what it speaks of
Had happened but last night.

"Come a little nearer, Doctor, - thank you, let me take the cup:

Draw your chair up, - draw it closer, just another

little sup!

May be you may think I'm better; but I'm pretty well used up,

Doctor, you've done all you could do, but I'm just a-going up!

"Feel my pulse, sir, if you want to, but it ain't much

"Never say that," said the Surgeon, as he smothered down a sigh;

"It will never do, old comrade, for a soldier to say

die!"

"What you say will make no difference, Doctor, when you come to die."

"Doctor, what has been the matter?" "You were very faint, they say;

You must try to get to sleep now." "Doctor, have I been away?

'Not that anybody knows of!" "Doctor - Doctor, please to stay!

There is something I must tell you, and you won't have long to stay!

"I have got my marching orders, and I'm ready now

to go;

Doctor, did you say I fainted? but it could n't ha'

been so,

For as sure as I'm a Sergeant, and was wounded at

Shiloh,

I've this very night been back there, on the old field of Shiloh!

"This is all that I remember: The last time the Lighter came,

And the lights had all been lowered, and the noises much the same,

He had not been gone five minutes before something called my name:

'ORDERLY SERGEANT

ROBERT BURTON!' — just

that way it called my name.

"And I wondered who could call me so distinctly and so slow,

Knew it could n't be the Lighter, — he could not have

And I tried to answer, Here, sir!' but I could n't

make it go;

For I could n't move a muscle, and I could n't make it

go.

"Then I thought: It's all a nightmare, all a humbug and a bore;

1

Just another foolish grape-vine 1- and it won't come

any more;

But it came, sir, notwithstanding, just the same way as before:

'ORDERLY SERGEANT - ROBERT BURTON!'-even louder than before.

"That is all that I remember, till a sudden burst of

light,

1 A false story, a hoax.

And I stood beside the River, where we stood that

Sunday night,

Waiting to be ferried over to the dark bluffs opposite, When the river was perdition and all hell was opposite!

"And the same old palpitation came again in all its

power,

And I heard a Bugle sounding, as from some celestial

Tower;

6

And the same mysterious voice said: IT IS THE ELEV

to-morrow will be New Year's, and a right

good time below!

What time is it, Doctor Austin?"

"Then don't you go!

"Nearly Twelve."

Can it be that all this happened - all this - not an

hour ago!

"There was where the gunboats opened on the dark rebellious host;

And where Webster semicircled his last guns upon the

coast;

There were still the two log-houses, just the same, or else their ghost

And the same old transport came and took me over — or its ghost!

"And the old field lay before me all deserted far and

wide;

There was where they fell on Prentiss

Clernand met the tide;

there Mc

There was where stern Sherman rallied, and where Hurlbut's heroes died,

Lower down, where Wallace charged them, and kept charging till he died.

"There was where Lew Wallace showed them he was of the canny kin,

There was where old Nelson thundered, and where Rousseau waded in;

There McCook sent 'em to breakfast, and we all began to win

There was where the grape-shot took me, just as we began to win.

"Now, a shroud of snow and silence over everything was spread;

And but for this old blue mantle and the old hat on my head,

I should not have even doubted, to this moment, I was dead,

For my footsteps were as silent as the snow upon the dead!

"Death and silence!- Death and silence! all around me as I sped!

And behold, a mighty Tower, as if builded to the

dead,

To the Heaven of the heavens lifted up its mighty

head,

Till the Stars and Stripes of Heaven all seemed waving from its head!

"Round and mighty based it towered up into the infinite