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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=373451" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Battle Of Lundy's Lane</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Rufus Gale speaks--1852</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Yes,--in the Lincoln Militia,--in the war of eighteen-twelve;<br>Many's the day I've had since then to dig and delve--<br>But those are the years I remember as the brightest years of all,<br>When we left the plow in the furrow to follow the bugle's call.<br>Why, even our son Abner wanted to fight with the men!<br>'Don't you go, d'ye hear, sir!'--I was angry with him then.<br>'Stay with your mother!' I said, and he looked so old and grim--<br>He was just sixteen that April--I couldn't believe it was him;<br>But I didn't think--I was off--and we met the foe again,<br>Five thousand strong and ready, at the hill by Lundy's Lane.<br>There as the night came on we fought them from six to nine,<br>Whenever they broke our line we broke their line,<br>They took our guns and we won them again, and around the levels<br>Where the hill sloped up--with the Eighty-ninth,--we fought like devils<br>Around the flag;--and on they came and we drove them back,<br>Until with its very fierceness the fight grew slack.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It was then about nine and dark as a miser's pocket,<br>When up came Hercules Scott's brigade swift as a rocket,<br>And charged,--and the flashes sprang in the dark like a lion's eyes;<br>The night was full of fire--groans, and cheers, and cries;<br>Then through the sound and the fury another sound broke in--<br>The roar of a great old duck-gun shattered the rest of the din;<br>It took two minutes to charge it and another to set it free.<br>Every time I heard it an angel spoke to me;<br>Yes, the minute I heard it I felt the strangest tide<br>Flow in my veins like lightning, as if, there, by my side,<br>Was the very spirit of Valor. But 'twas dark--you couldn't see--<br>And the one who was firing the duck-gun fell against me<br>And slid down to the clover, and lay there still;<br>Something went through me--piercing--with a strange, swift thrill;<br>The noise fell away into silence, and I heard as clear as thunder<br>The long, slow roar of Niagara: O the wonder<br>Of that deep sound. But again the battle broke<br>And the foe, driven before us desperately--stroke upon stroke,<br>Left the field to his master, and sullenly down the road<br>Sounded the boom of his guns, trailing the heavy load<br>Of his wounded men and his shattered flags, sullen and slow,<br>Setting fire in his rage to Bridgewater mills and the glow<br>Flared in the distant forest. We rested as we could,<br>And for a while I slept in the dark of a maple wood:<br>But when the clouds in the east were red all over,<br>I came back there to the place we made the stand in the clover;<br>For my heart was heavy then with a strange deep pain,<br>As I thought of the glorious fight, and again and again<br>I remembered the valiant spirit and the piercing thrill;<br>But I knew it all when I reached the top of the hill,--<br>For there, there with the blood on his dear, brave head,<br>There on the hill in the clover lay our Abner--dead!--<br>No--thank you--no, I don't need it; I'm solid as granite rock,<br>But every time that I tell it I feel the old, cold shock,<br>I'm eighty-one my next birthday--do you breed such fellows now?<br>There he lay with the dawn cooling his broad fair brow,<br>That was no dawn for him; and there was the old duck-gun<br>That many and many's the time,--just for the fun,<br>We together, alone, would take to the hickory rise,<br>And bring home more wild pigeons than ever you saw with your eyes.<br>Up with Hercules Scott's brigade, just as it came on night--<br>He was the angel beside me in the thickest of the fight--<br>Wrote a note to his mother--He said, 'I've got to go;<br>Mother what would home be under the heel of the foe!'<br>Oh! she never slept a wink, she would rise and walk the floor;<br>She'd say this over and over, 'I knew it all before!'<br>I'd try to speak of the glory to give her a little joy.<br>'What is the glory to me when I want my boy, my boy!'<br>She'd say, and she'd wring her hands; her hair grew white as snow--<br>And I'd argue with her up and down, to and fro,<br>Of how she had mothered a hero, and his was a glorious fate,<br>Better than years of grubbing to gather an estate.<br>Sometimes I'd put it this way: 'If God was to say to me now<br>'Take him back as he once was helping you with the plow,'<br>I'd say, 'No, God, thank You kindly; 'twas You that he obeyed;<br>You told him to fight and he fought, and he wasn't afraid;<br>You wanted to prove him in battle, You sent him to Lundy's Lane,<br>'Tis well!' But she only would answer over and over again,<br>'Give me back my Abner--give me back my son!'<br>It was so all through the winter until the spring had begun,<br>And the crocus was up in the dooryard, and the drift by the fence<br>was thinned,<br>And the sap drip-dropped from the branches wounded by the wind,<br>And the whole earth smelled like a flower,--then she came to me one<br>night--<br>'Rufus!' she said, with a sob in her throat,--'Rufus, you're right.'<br>I hadn't cried till then, not a tear--but then I was torn in two--<br>There, it's all right--my eyes don't see as they used to do!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But O the joy of that battle--it was worth the whole of life,<br>You felt immortal in action with the rapture of the strife,<br>There in the dark by the river, with the flashes of fire before,<br>Running and crashing along, there in the dark, and the roar<br>Of the guns, and the shrilling cheers, and the knowledge that filled<br>your heart<br>That there was a victory making and you must do your part,<br>But--there's his grave in the orchard where the headstone glimmers<br>white:<br>We could see it, we thought, from our window even on the darkest<br>night;<br>It is set there for a sign that what one lad could do<br>Would be done by a hundred hundred lads whose hearts were stout and<br>true.<br>And when in the time of trial you hear the recreant say,<br>Shooting his coward lips at us, 'You shall have had your day:<br>For all your state and glory shall pass like a cloudy wrack,<br>And here some other flag shall fly where flew the Union Jack,'--<br>Why tell him a hundred thousand men would spring from these sleepy<br>farms,<br>To tie that flag in its ancient place with the sinews of their arms;<br>And if they doubt you and put you to scorn, why you can make it plain,<br>With the tale of the gallant Lincoln men and the fight at Lundy's Lane.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Duncan+Campbell+Scott">Duncan Campbell Scott</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=373451" data-title="The Battle Of Lundy's Lane de Duncan Campbell Scott" data-description="Rufus Gale speaks--1852


Yes,--in the Lincoln Militia,--in the war of eighteen-twelve;
Many's the day I've had since then to dig and delve--
But those are the years I remember as the brightest years of all,
When we left the plow in the furrow to ..."></div>
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