Poems

15–16 December 1864

Battle of Nashville

FOREWORD.

The poems here collected are in the main reprints of pieces that
originally appeared in various newspapers and periodicals, beginning
with the Louisville Journal in the late ’50s. This newspaper was at that
time edited by the brilliant George D. Prentice, my personal friend, who
a few years after I had left college offered me the assistant editorship
of his paper. The imperative duty which at that time I owed to others
forced me to decline this offer, although for many years I wrote
editorials and verses for this then powerful and widely read journal.
Many of the poems here collected have appeared in the columns of the
Louisville daily papers and have been copied in other journals, North
and South, and in poetic collections. Others were first printed in the
Nashville Press and Times, of which I was editor during my two terms as
Public Printer of Tennessee, during the administrations of Military
Governor Andrew Johnson and of Governor Brownlow in the days of
Reconstruction.

It will be noticed that the partisan poems breathe the spirit of the
times in which they were written--the stormy ’60s--but I have not
thought it wise to change their tone, they being now only the record of
a long-since departed day. There has been some controversy as to the
authorship of the poem “The Angel of the Hospital,” owing to a
manuscript copy of this poem being found on the body of a young
Confederate officer killed in one of the battles in Georgia, and from
which the poem was reprinted in many of the Southern newspapers. I had
previously, however, printed it in the Louisville Journal, and as
newspapers were scarce in the South at that time, the unfortunate youth
must have copied the verses before passing the newspaper on to his
comrades.

Dark Echo River’s weeping wave
Shall mourn beneath the warrior’s grave,
The dauntless partisan who rode
Right on through storm and snow and flood.
The foe exclaims, “He’s here!” “He’s there!”
Vanished like spectres in the air,
Trackless, save for the empty stall,
Or smoke wreath rising like a pall
Over the commissary’s store,
Where hungry comrades loud deplore
The thunderbolt of Morgan’s raid--
Chief of th’ Invisible Brigade,
Vanished, like morning rainbow, spun
By golden distaff of the sun.

There is bustle and commotion to-night with “Ellen N,”
Fair Ellen, maid of iron stays, beloved of many men,
From a thousand fertile valleys, from many a teeming glen,
She bears great stores on laboring trains to Thomas and his men
The blue-coats down at Nashville have come to do or die,
To battle for the old flag beneath the Southern sky,
And to Ellen’s welcome ministry--they look most wistfully,
She bears souvenirs and messages in her capacious trains,
The maidens of the great Northwest send greetings to their swains,
She has hard-tack, and tobacco, and bacon in her store,
She has cod-fish and dried beef and gingerbread galore,
From Keystone, Empire State, from Indiana’s plains
Ellen speeds them all along in her wide flowing trains,
Bibles and tracts and song-books, and sweet messages from home,
And prayer-books from every church from Geneva to Rome,
From many a Western Valley, from many a quiet glen,
Comes goodly cheer from the kindly hands of buxom Ellen N.
There is trouble on your road to-night, O dauntless Ellen N!
There is panic, there is hurry--’tis John Morgan and his men,
There are bridges burned--the track’s ripped up--some one has
cut the wire
And commissary stores go up by thousands in the fire,
A sudden charge at midnight, the long train is in ashes,
The magazine explodes with deafening roar and crashes,
Millions go up like tinder in a

Nashville and Chattanooga rue,
Divided rations cut in two.
The horseman scathless burned and fled
Their foes went supperless to bed.
They might as well have fought the air
They charged--but Morgan was not there.
His baffled foe, always too slow
To harass or inflict a blow,
Muttered, “For sure the man’s a wizard,
One might as well strike at a blizzard,”
He’s here--he’s gone again--he’s there!
Like exhalation of the air
Waving its strange, uncanny light
O’er grave or dismal swamp at night.
One trait his hottest foe confessed,
“A hero’s heart beats in his breast,
He never strikes a foe when down,
Nor woman ever saw him frown.”

The mean poltroon of later days
Who dons a mask in devious ways,
Black mask and heart, in liver white,
Fleet as a hare in coward flight
And worthy of the hangman’s loop
Ne’er found his like in Morgan’s troop.
They lashed no helpless foeman’s back,
No woman felt his brute attack.
He burned no roof o’er matron’s head,
While sleeping with her babes in bed,
Nor scourged with thorns till shoulders bled.
No town was burned in bandit flame
Till the poltroon Night-riders came,
With bloody threats in unsigned letters
And switches to alarm their betters;
An anarchist of basest soul,
The gallows-tree his fitting goal
Without a hope of reformation
He forces this dilemma on the nation,
Expatriation or Extermination.

In Gotham’s mighty mart of trade,
Which all of worth and brain invites
The men of Morgan’s cavalcade
Conspicuous walk as shining lights
As walked the men of Washington
When Revolution’s war was done.
In posts of honor now they labor
As when equipped with gun and sabre,
And men exclaim on every hand
“These rode in Morgan’s great Command.
Nor lapse of years shall e’er dispel
The love with which they fondly dwell
On comrades who in battle fell,
Who braved Stone River’s fiery scath,
Or forward pressed on bloody path
Of Shiloh’s field or Nashville’s wrath.