THE DRUMMER BOY'S BURIAL

                  Library of World Poetry 379

ALL day long the storm of battle through the
       startled valley swept;
All night long the stars in heaven o'er the slain
      sad vigils kept.

O the ghastly upturned faces gleaming whitely
       through the night!
O the heaps of mangled corpses in that dim sepul-
       chral light!

One by one the pale stars faded, and at length
      the morning broke;
But not one of all the sleepers on that field of
      death awoke.

Slowly passed the golden hours of that long bright
      summer day,
And upon that field  of carnage still the  dead
     unburied lay.

Lay there stark and cold, but pleading with a
      dumb, unceasing prayer,
For a little dust to hide them from the staring
       sun and air.

But the foeman held  possession  of  that hard-
       won battle-plain,
In unholy wrath denying even burial to our slain.

Once again  the  night  dropped round them, 
       night so holy and so calm
That the moonbeams hushed the spirit, like the
      sound of prayer or psalm.


On a couch of trampled grasses, just apart from all
       the rest,
Lay a fair young boy, with small hands meekly
      folded on his breast.

Death had touched him very gently, and he lay
      as if in sleep;
Even his mother scarce had shuddered at that
     slumber calm and deep.

For a smile of wondrous sweetness lent a radiance
       to the face,
And the hand of cunning sculptor could have
    added naught of grace

To the marble limbs so perfect in their passion-
      less repose,
Robbed of all save matchless purity by hard,
      unpitying foes.

And the broken drum beside him all his life's
      short story told:
How he did his duty bravely till the death-tide
      o'er him rolled.
 
Midnight came with ebon garments and a diadem
     of stars,
While right upward in the zenith hung the fiery
      planet Mars.

Hark! a sound of stealthy footsteps and of voices
     whispering low,
Was it nothing but the young leaves, or the
      brooklet's murmuring flow ?

Clinging closely to each other, striving never to
      look round
As they passed with silent shudder the pale
     corpses on the ground,

Came two little maidens, -- sisters, -- with a
      light and hasty tread,
And a look upon their faces, half of sorrow, half
      of dread.

 And they did not pause nor falter till, with
       throbbing hearts, they stood
Where the drummer-boy was lying in that
       partial solitude.

They had brought some simple garments from
       their wardrobe's scanty store,
 And two heavy iron shovels in their slender
      hands they bore.

 Then they quickly  knelt beside him, crushing
       back the pitying tears,
 For they had no time for weeping, nor for any
        girlish fears.
And they robed the icy body, while no glow of
     maiden shame
Changed the pallor of their foreheads to a flush
      of lambent flame.

For their saintly hearts yearned o'er it in that
       hour of sorest need,
And they felt that Death was holy, and it sanc-
      tified the deed.

But they smiled and kissed each other when
      their new strange task was o'er,
And the form that lay before them its unwonted
      garments wore.

Then with slow and weary labor a small grave
       they hollowed out,
And they lined it with the withered grass and
      leaves that lay about.

But the day was slowly breaking ere their holy
      work was done,
And in crimson pomp the morning again heralded
      the sun.

And then those little maidens -- they were
      children of our foes --
Laid the body of our drummer-boy to undis-
      turbed repose.
                                   ANONYMOUS