Listless he eyes the palisades
  And sentries in the glare;
’Tis barren as a pelican-beach—­
  But his world is ended there.

Nothing to do; and vacant hands
  Bring on the idiot-pain;
He tries to think—­to recollect,
  But the blur is on his brain.

Around him swarm the plaining ghosts
  Like those on Virgil’s shore—­
A wilderness of faces dim,
  And pale ones gashed and hoar.

A smiting sun.  No shed, no tree;
  He totters to his lair—­
A den that sick hands dug in earth
  Ere famine wasted there,

Or, dropping in his place, he swoons,
  Walled in by throngs that press,
Till forth from the throngs they bear him dead—­
  Dead in his meagreness.

The College Colonel.

He rides at their head;
  A crutch by his saddle just slants in view,
One slung arm is in splints, you see,
  Yet he guides his strong steed—­how coldly too.

He brings his regiment home—­
  Not as they filed two years before,
But a remnant half-tattered, and battered, and worn,
Like castaway sailors, who—­stunned
    By the surf’s loud roar,
  Their mates dragged back and seen no more—­
Again and again breast the surge,
  And at last crawl, spent, to shore.

A still rigidity and pale—­
  An Indian aloofness lones his brow;
He has lived a thousand years
Compressed in battle’s pains and prayers,
  Marches and watches slow.

There are welcoming shouts, and flags;
  Old men off hat to the Boy,
Wreaths from gay balconies fall at his feet,
  But to him—­there comes alloy.

It is not that a leg is lost,
  It is not that an arm is maimed. 
It is not that the fever has racked—­
  Self he has long disclaimed.

But all through the Seven Day’s Fight,
  And deep in the wilderness grim,
And in the field-hospital tent,
  And Petersburg crater, and dim
Lean brooding in Libby, there came—­
  Ah heaven!—­what truth to him.

The Eagle of the Blue.[12]

Aloft he guards the starry folds
  Who is the brother of the star;
The bird whose joy is in the wind
  Exultleth in the war.

No painted plume—­a sober hue,
  His beauty is his power;
That eager calm of gaze intent
  Foresees the Sibyl’s hour.

Austere, he crowns the swaying perch,
  Flapped by the angry flag;
The hurricane from the battery sings,
  But his claw has known the crag.

Amid the scream of shells, his scream
  Runs shrilling; and the glare
Of eyes that brave the blinding sun
  The vollied flame can bear.

The pride of quenchless strength is his—­
  Strength which, though chained, avails;
The very rebel looks and thrills—­
  The anchored Emblem hails.

Though scarred in many a furious fray,
  No deadly hurt he knew;
Well may we think his years are charmed—­
  The Eagle of the Blue.