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| 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,— | 5 |
| The only man who did n’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, | 10 |
| The very day that General Lee, | |
| Flower of Southern chivalry, | |
| Baffled and beaten, backward reeled | |
| From a stubborn Meade and a barren field. | |
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| I might tell how, but the day before, | 15 |
| 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; | 20 |
| Or I might say, when the sunset burned | |
| The old farm gable, he thought it turned | |
| The milk, that fell in a babbling flood | |
| Into the milk-pail, red as blood! | |
| Or how he fancied the hum of bees | 25 |
| 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 | 30 |
| 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 folks say, | |
| He fought so well on that terrible day. | 35 |
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| 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 | 40 |
| Undulate like the living waves | |
| That all that day unceasing swept | |
| Up to the pits the rebels kept— | |
| Round shot ploughed the upland glades, | |
| Sown with bullets, reaped with blades; | 45 |
| Shattered fences here and there | |
| Tossed their splinters in the air; | |
| The very trees were stripped and bare; | |
| The barns that once held yellow grain | |
| Were heaped with harvests of the slain; | 50 |
| The cattle bellowed on the plain, | |
| The turkeys screamed with might and main, | |
| And brooding barn-fowl left their rest | |
| With strange shells bursting in each nest. | |
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| Just where the tide of battle turns, | 55 |
| Erect and lonely stood old John Burns. | |
| How do you think the man was dressed? | |
| He wore an ancient long buff vest, | |
| Yellow as saffron,—but his best; | |
| And buttoned over his manly breast | 60 |
| Was a bright blue coat, with a rolling collar, | |
| And large gilt buttons,—size of a dollar,— | |
| With tails that the country-folk called “swaller.” | |
| He wore a broad-brimmed, bell-crowned hat, | |
| White as the locks on which it sat. | 65 |
| Never had such a sight been seen | |
| For forty years on the village green, | |
| Since old John Burns was a country beau, | |
| And went to the “quiltings” long ago. | |
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| Close at his elbows all that day, | 70 |
| Veterans of the Peninsula, | |
| Sunburnt and bearded, charged away; | |
| And striplings, downy of lip and chin,— | |
| Clerks that the Home Guard mustered in,— | |
| Glanced, as they passed, at the hat he wore, | 75 |
| Then at the rifle his right hand bore; | |
| And hailed him, from out their youthful lore, | |
| With scraps of a slangy répertoire: | |
| “How are you, White Hat!” “Put her through!” | |
| “Your head ’s level,” and “Bully for you!” | 80 |
| Called him “Daddy,”—begged he ’d disclose | |
| The name of the tailor who made his clothes; | |
| And what was the value he set on those, | |
| While Burns, unmindful of jeer and scoff, | |
| Stood there picking the rebels off,— | 85 |
| With his long brown rifle, and bell-crown hat, | |
| And the swallow-tails they were laughing at. | |
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| ’T was but a moment, for that respect | |
| Which clothes all courage their voices checked; | |
| And something the wildest could understand | 90 |
| Spake in the old man’s strong right hand; | |
| And his corded throat, and the lurking frown | |
| Of his eyebrows under his old bell-crown; | |
| Until, as they gazed, there crept an awe | |
| Through the ranks in whispers, and some men saw, | 95 |
| In the antique vestments and long white hair, | |
| The Past of the Nation in battle there; | |
| And some of the soldiers since declare | |
| That the gleam of his old white hat afar, | |
| Like the crested plume of the brave Navarre, | 100 |
| That day was their oriflamme of war. | |
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| So raged the battle. You know the rest: | |
| How the rebels, beaten, and backward pressed, | |
| Broke at the final charge, and ran. | |
| At which John Burns—a practical man— | 105 |
| Shouldered his rifle, unbent his brows, | |
| And then went back to his bees and cows. | |
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| That is the story of old John Burns; | |
| This is the moral the reader learns: | |
| In fighting the battle, the question ’s whether | 110 |
| You ’ll show a hat that ’s white, or a feather. | |
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