free-verse56 lines
Pro Patria Et Gloria.
by Jr. George Augustus BakerThe lights blaze high in our brilliant rooms;
Fair are the maidens who throng our halls;
Soft, through the warm and perfumed air,
The languid music swells and falls.
The "Seventh" dances and flirts to-night
All we are fit for, so they say,
We fops and weaklings, who masquerade
As soldiers, sometimes, in black and gray.
We can manage to make a street parade,
But, in a fight, we'd be sure to run.
Defend you! pshaw, the thought's absurd!
How about April, sixty-one?
What was it made your dull blood thrill?
Why did you cheer, and weep, and pray?
Why did each pulse of your hearts mark time
To the tramp of the boys in black and gray?
You've not forgotten the nation's call
When down in the South the war-cloud burst;
"Troops for the front!" Do you ever think
Who answered, and marched, and got there first?
Whose bayonets first scared Maryland?
Whose were the colors that showed the way?
Who set the step for the marching North?
Some holiday soldiers in black and gray.
"Pretty boys in their pretty suits!"
"Too pretty by far to take under fire!"
A pretty boy in a pretty suit
Lay once in Bethel's bloody mire.
The first to fall in the war's first fight
Raise him tenderly. Wash away
The blood and mire from the pretty suit;
For Winthrop died in the black and gray.
In the shameful days in sixty-three,
When the city fluttered in abject fear,
'Neath the mob's rude grasp, who ever thought
"God! if the Seventh were only here!"
Our drums were heard the ruffian crew
Grew tired of riot the self-same day
By chance of course you don't suppose
They feared the dandies in black and gray!
So we dance and flirt in our listless style
While the waltzes dream in the drill-room arch,
What would we do if the order came,
Sudden and sharp "Let the Seventh march!"
Why, we'd faint, of course; our cheeks would pale;
Our knees would tremble, our fears but stay,
That order I think has come ere this
To those holiday troops in black and gray.
"What would we do!" We'd drown our drums
In a storm of cheers, and the drill-room floor
Would ring with rifles. Why, you fools,
We'd do as we've always done before!
Do our duty! Take what comes
With laugh and jest, be it feast or fray
But we're dandies yes, for we'd rather die
Than sully the pride of our black and gray.