Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THOROUGHBREDS (AN INCIDENT OF THE FIGHT AROUND ATLANTA), by JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THOROUGHBREDS (AN INCIDENT OF THE FIGHT AROUND ATLANTA), by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Straight at the breastworks, flanked with / fire
Last Line: Will be—the sons of the thoroughbred!
Subject(s): American Civil War; Camp-meetings; Fights; Militarism; Soldiers; U.s. - History; U.s. - Military Academy


STRAIGHT at the breastworks, flanked with fire,
Where the angry rifles spat their ire,
And the reeling cannon rocked with flame,
Swift as his namesake, Bullet came.
Young was his rider, fifteen and two,
And yet the battles that he'd been through
Were fifteen and ten—a braver lad
Old Fighting Forrest never had!

And as he rode down the rifled wind
His brown curls bannered the breeze behind.
"O, they are mother's," he had laughed and said
When the men nicknamed him "Trundle Bed"
Two years before—when he first ran away
From mother and school to don the gray.
"But that's all right"—with a toss of his head—
"For Bullet is grown—and he's thoroughbred!"

But that was before the Shiloh fight
Where he led the charge 'gainst Prentiss' right.
And as he came through the smoke and flame
Old Forrest himself was heard to exclaim:
"Just look at Bullet and Trundle Bed!
I tell you, boys, they're both thoroughbred!"
And from that day on it became a law,
"Follow Bullet and you'll go to war!"
To-day he rode less erect, I ween,
For he'd had a battle with General Gangrene
In the hospital tent—(a ball in his chest
For riding too far over Kenesaw's crest).
But even while tossing with fever and pain
He had caught a whiff of battle again,
Just smelt it afloat in the sulphurous air,
And he knew, somehow, that Forrest was there
And hard pressed, too—so, 'twixt crutches and crawl,
That night he slipped out to Bullet's stall.
A whinnying welcome—a kiss on his ear,
"I'm alive yet, Bullet—Trundle Bed's here!"
A pattering gallop at first daylight,
The boom of a gun on Johnston's right—
"That's Cleburne, Bullet! What a charming fight!"

Straight at the sheeted and leaden rain
He rode—Alas! not back again!
For the hot fire scorched the curls of brown,
And grapeshot mowed their owner down,
And the heart that beat for mother and home
Was dumb where it wept and wet the loam,
And dim in the dust the blue eyes fine—
But Bullet charged over the Yankee line.

Charged over the line!—then he missed the touch
Of the rider that always had loved him much,
And he wheeled as the gray lines rose and fell
'Neath fire like fire from the pits of hell,
And he rushed again on a backward track
When he saw the Texas brigade fall back.
But whose was the form that caught his eye
With boots to the guns and face to the sky?
And whose was the voice?—"Tell mother good-bye!"
And why were the curls red? His were brown—
He stopped as if a shot had brought him down!

Hell answered hell in the cannon's roar,
And steel cursed steel—yet he stood before
The form he loved;—for he knew the eyes
Though their June had changed to December skies.
Hell answered hell in the cannon's roar,
And steel cursed steel—yet he whinnied o'er
The form he loved, while the grapeshot tore!
And still he stood o'er the curly head—
For Bullet, you know, was thoroughbred—
Till a solid shot plowed a cruel rent,—
A last loving whinny—and Bullet was spent!

The burying squad in blue next day
Stopped to a man as they wiped away
A tear—for there all calm 'mid the wreck
Was Trundle Bed pillowed on Bullet's neck!

O Union great, O Union strong,
The South, you say, was in the wrong,
And yet, some day, when the foe shall come,
Some day at the beat of an insolent drum,
When the glorious Stars and Stripes unfurl'd
Shall stand for Home in Freedom's world,
The first their blood in the cause to shed
Will be—the sons of the thoroughbred!





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