Dreams and Days: Poems

MARTHY VIRGINIA'S HAND

"There, on the left!" said the colonel: the battle
had shuddered and faded away,
Wraith of a fiery enchantment that left only
ashes and blood-sprinkled clay—
"Ride to the left and examine that ridge, where
the enemy's sharpshooters stood.
Lord, how they picked off our men, from the
treacherous vantage-ground of the wood!
But for their bullets, I'll bet, my batteries sent
them something as good.
Go and explore, and report to me then, and tell
me how many we killed.
Never a wink shall I sleep till I know our vengeance
was duly fulfilled."

Fiercely the orderly rode down the slope of the
corn-field—scarred and forlorn,
Rutted by violent wheels, and scathed by the
shot that had plowed it in scorn;
Fiercely, and burning with wrath for the sight
of his comrades crushed at a blow,
Flung in broken shapes on the ground like
ruined memorials of woe:
These were the men whom at daybreak he knew,
but never again could know.
Thence to the ridge, where roots outthrust, and
twisted branches of trees
Clutched the hill like clawing lions, firm their
prey to seize.

"What's your report?"—and the grim colonel
smiled when the orderly came back at last.
Strangely the soldier paused: "Well, they were
punished." And strange his face, aghast.
"Yes, our fire told on them; knocked over fifty—
laid out in line of parade.
Brave fellows, colonel, to stay as they did! But
one I 'most wish had n't stayed.
Mortally wounded, he'd torn off his knapsack;
and then at the end he prayed—
Easy to see, by his hands that were clasped;
and the dull, dead fingers yet held
This little letter—his wife's—from the knapsack.
A pity those woods were shelled!"

Silent the orderly, watching with tears in his eyes
as his officer scanned
Four short pages of writing. "What's this, about
'Marthy Virginia's hand'?"
Swift from his honeymoon he, the dead soldier,
had gone from his bride to the strife;
Never they met again, but she had written him,
telling of that new life,
Born in the daughter, that bound her still closer
and closer to him as his wife.
Laying her baby's hand down on the letter,
around it she traced a rude line;
"If you would kiss the baby," she wrote, "you
must kiss this outline of mine."

There was the shape of the hand on the page,
with the small, chubby fingers outspread.
"Marthy Virginia's hand, for her pa,"—so the
words on the little palm said.
Never a wink slept the colonel that night, for
the vengeance so blindly fulfilled;
Never again woke the old battle-glow when the
bullets their death-note shrilled.
Long ago ended the struggle, in union of
brotherhood happily stilled;
Yet from that field of Antietam, in warning and
token of love's command,
See! there is lifted the hand of a baby—Marthy
Virginia's hand!