What knows the world of battles? History writes
The deeds of men with blood and triumph hails
As trophy of their valor, armament
Or better fortune, thinking he who fights
With surer odds or tactics seldom fails
In the last holocaust of war’s event.
Impassioned eyes see not the shadow-shapes
That hover on the flank of charging hosts,
Ready to launch themselves as chance array;
Not one of all the mustered lines escapes
When mockery’s phantom centauri the boasts
Of martial pride downtrample and dismay.
Ah, Waterloo! where scarred battalions strove
And overwhelmed each other, blood-imbrued,
Hurling their troops with savage impotence—
The conquering cavalry which o’er thee drove
Was not the one the Corsican reviewed,
Nor yet the Iron Duke with grimmer sense.
Ah, Gettysburg! whose murderous brigades
Met in the shambles of a horror-hell
Or rushed like demons in the jaws of death—
Thy most resistless riders were the shades
Of other erstwhile terribles who fell
Drawing the sword from its envenomed sheath.
In vain each other’s throats the blue and grey
Sprang at like wolves of Winter mad for flesh,
And yet unsated till the kill-lust leaped
In exultation’s shout of victory!
Not all thy columns veteran or fresh
Could save the field by grisly corpses heaped
Against the spectral squadron which outrode
Both Fighting Phil and Morgan’s Men alike,
As on the Battle’s flank it weirdly hung
Or where the Dragon’s Teeth of Hate were sowed
Sprang up as Headless Horsemen armed to strike
And crumple back the charge by fury flung.
They loomed like apparitions, terror-born,
Yet ghastly real and dreadly sinister,
Abreast of every vanguard and redoubt;
O’er trench and belching gun they swept in scorn
Or carried panic to the broken rear
Till all was carnage, cowardice and rout.
Invincible formations, onsets’ surge
Of vengeance’ boldest fiends, manœuvres dire
With compassing destruction—all before
The grewsome legionaries’ mounted charge
Were swept like chaff by maelstrom wind and fire
And rose again in prowess nevermore.
But on the ghost-troop galloped as of old
In every bloody battle, never dead
And never yet defeated; phantoms still
That gallop, gallop o’er the mortal mould
Of every tragic battlefield once red
With madmen’s life-blood at their country’s will!