The fight for the city is fought
          In Nature’s old domain;
        Man goes out to the wilds,
          And Orpheus’ charm is vain.

In glades they meet skull after skull
  Where pine-cones lay—­the rusted gun,
Green shoes full of bones, the mouldering coat
  And cuddled-up skeleton;
And scores of such.  Some start as in dreams,
  And comrades lost bemoan: 
By the edge of those wilds Stonewall had charged—­
  But the Year and the Man were gone.

        At the height of their madness
          The night winds pause,
        Recollecting themselves;
          But no lull in these wars.

A gleam!—­a volley!  And who shall go
  Storming the swarmers in jungles dread? 
No cannon-ball answers, no proxies are sent—­
  They rush in the shrapnel’s stead. 
Plume and sash are vanities now—­
  Let them deck the pall of the dead;
They go where the shade is, perhaps into Hades,
  Where the brave of all times have led.

        There’s a dust of hurrying feet,
          Bitten lips and bated breath,
        And drums that challenge to the grave,
          And faces fixed, forefeeling death.

What husky huzzahs in the hazy groves—­
  What flying encounters fell;
Pursuer and pursued like ghosts disappear
  In gloomed shade—­their end who shall tell? 
The crippled, a ragged-barked stick for a crutch,
  Limp to some elfin dell—­
Hobble from the sight of dead faces—­white
  As pebbles in a well.

        Few burial rites shall be;
          No priest with book and band
        Shall come to the secret place
          Of the corpse in the foeman’s land.

Watch and fast, march and fight—­clutch your gun? 
  Day-fights and night-fights; sore is the strees;
Look, through the pines what line comes on? 
  Longstreet slants through the hauntedness? 
’Tis charge for charge, and shout for yell: 
  Such battles on battles oppress—­
But Heaven lent strength, the Right strove well,
  And emerged from the Wilderness.

Emerged, for the way was won;
But the Pillar of Smoke that led
Was brand-like with ghosts that went up
Ashy and red.

None can narrate that strife in the pines,
  A seal is on it—­Sabaean lore! 
Obscure as the wood, the entangled rhyme
  But hints at the maze of war—­
Vivid glimpses or livid through peopled gloom,
  And fires which creep and char—­
A riddle of death, of which the slain
    Sole solvers are.

Long they withhold the roll
Of the shroudless dead.  It is right;
Not yet can we bear the flare
Of the funeral light.

On the Photograph of a Corps Commander.

Ay, man is manly.  Here you see
  The warrior-carriage of the head,
And brave dilation of the frame;
  And lighting all, the soul that led
In Spottsylvania’s charge to victory,
  Which justifies his fame.