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 didnt 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 batterys double bass,     Difficult music for men to face     While on the left where now the graves     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;     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;     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.     Just where the tide of battle turns,     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     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.     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.     Close at his elbows all that day,     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,     Then at the rifle his right hand bore,     And hailed him, from out their youthful lore,     With scraps of a slangy repertoire:     How are you, White Hat? Put her through!     Your heads level! and Bully for you!     Called him Daddy, begged hed 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,     With his long brown rifle and bell-crown hat,     And the swallow-tails they were laughing at.     Twas but a moment, for that respect     Which clothes all courage their voices checked;     And something the wildest could understand     Spake in the old mans 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,     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,     That day was their oriflamme of war.     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     Shouldered his rifle, unbent his brows,     And then went back to his bees and cows.     That is the story of old John Burns;     This is the moral the reader learns:     In fighting the battle, the questions whether     Youll show a hat thats white, or a feather!