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FARRAGUT.

Thunderbolt Farragut

Hurls the black ships.

Now through the battle's roar Clear the boy sings,

"By the mark fathoms four," While his lead swings. Steady the wheelmen five "Nor' by east keep her," "Steady," but two alive:

How the shells sweep her!

Lashed to the mast that sways

Over red decks,
Over the flame that plays

Round the torn wrecks,

Over the dying lips

Framed for a cheer,

Farragut leads his ships,
Guides the line clear.

On by heights cannon-browed, While the spars quiver; Onward still flames the cloud

Where the hulks shiver. See, yon fort's star is set,

Storm and fire past.

[blocks in formation]

Oh! while Atlantic's breast

Bears a white sail,

While the Gulf's towering crest

Tops a green vale;

Men thy bold deeds shall tell,
Old Heart of Oak,

Daring Dave Farragut,

Thunderbolt stroke!

-W. T. Meredith.

JOHN BURNS OF GETTYSBURG.

John Burns of Gettysburg.

HAVE you heard the story that gossips tell
Of Burns of Gettysburg? No? Ah, well:

Brief is the glory that hero earns,

Briefer the story of poor John Burns;
He was the fellow who won renown,

The only man who didn't back down
When the rebels rode through his native town;
But held his own in the fight next day,

When all his townsfolk ran away.

That was in July, sixty-three,

The very day that General Lee,

Flower of Southern chivalry,

Baffled and beaten, backward reeled

From a stubborn Meade and a barren field.

I might tell how, but the day before,
John Burns stood at his cottage door,
Looking down the village street,
Where, in the shade of his peaceful vine,
He heard the low of his gathered kine,
And felt their breath with incense sweet;
Or, I might say, when the sunset burned
The old farm gable, he thought it turned

The milk that fell like a babbling flood
Into the milk-pail, red as blood;
Or, how he fancied the hum of bees
Were bullets buzzing among the trees.
But all such fanciful thoughts as these
Were strange to a practical man like Burns,
Who minded only his own concerns,

Troubled no more by fancies fine

Than one of his calm-eyed, long-tailed kine,
Quite old-fashioned and matter-of-fact,
Slow to argue, but quick to act.

That was the reason, as some folk say,

He fought so well on that terrible day.

And it was terrible. On the right
Raged for hours the heady fight,
Thundered the battery's double bass,
Difficult music for men to face;

While on the left, where now the graves
Undulate like the living waves
That all the day unceasing swept

Up to the pits the rebels kept,

Round-shot ploughed the upland glades,

Sown with bullets, reaped with blades;
Shattered fences here and there,

Tossed their splinters in the air;

The very trees were stripped and bare;

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