Around The Last Campfire
by Albert Greenwood
The sun had gone down while the army was trying
To check the assault of a numberless foe
Around us were scattered the wounded and dying,
Who fell while repelling that last awful blow.
There yet, in our hearts, was the hope of evading
The columns we knew that no more we could meet.
Our cartridges failed, while daylight was fading,
And with bayonets bare we must fight and retreat.
From the day that Manassas (first page in our history)
Was written in blood and with pencils of steel,
To the evening now past, in its corpse littered glory,
The army that met us had met us to reel.
"Now the bravest are killed, and the weakest have perished,
And famished and faint are the few that remain
Gone from our hearts are the hopes we have cherished,
That led us in triumph O'er mountain and plain."
The smoke of the battle hung dismally O'er us;
Far away in the south was a light in the sky,
While we, Whispering, talked of the morning before us,
And the graves where the dead of our battles still lie;
Of the comrades we knew when the war cloud was bursting,
Whose corpses were strewn over hillside and plain;
Of the battle just fought, until hungered and thirsting,
We wondered if we could renew it again.
Home was a subject we scarcely could mention,
Though never forgotten, long passed from our sight;
From the morning our captain had first called "Attention!"
Our days were in battle, our marches at night.
Yet sometimes a word or a look would remind us,
And often the thought would go back through the years,
Of home and of friends; but the vision would blind us,
Though the thoughts of our hearts were too bitter for tears.
Then we slept and we dreamed that a long line of battle
Was coming once more, like a wave on the sea;
And the roar of the guns and the musketry's rattle,
Were loud where our graves, in the morning, would be.
In our slumber we felt for the cartridges, missing,
And then for the bayonet, broke in the fray;
Our missiles were gone, and the bullets were hissing,
Around and among us, the last of the Gray.
We lived through the scenes when in hope we were younger,
And Walked O'er the paths that in childhood we trod;
We tried in our dreams to appease our keen hunger,
And restlessly turned in our couch on the sod.
Then blossoms were white, the magnolia was blooming;
And beneath there were forms like the houri's of old;
But their voices were lost in the cannon's dull booming,
And O'er us the battle cloud vividly rolled.
We were ‘roused from our dreams by the officers' warning,
And stood to our arms ere a soldier could see;
The march was resumed in the dawn of the morning,
The last time we formed as "The Army of Lee."
We were going once more, with no thought of returning;
We were following Lee, without counting the cost,
And we silently marched by (the embers still burning),
The last of our campfires. The Southland was lost.
