Hearing the Battle.—July 21, 1861

By Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt
One day in the dreamy summer,
    On the Sabbath hills, from afar
We heard the solemn echoes
    Of the first fierce words of war.
 
Ah, tell me, thou veilèd Watcher
    Of the storm and the calm to come,
How long by the sun or shadow
    Till these noises again are dumb.
 
And soon in a hush and glimmer
    We thought of the dark, strange fight,
Whose close in a ghastly quiet
    Lay dim in the beautiful night.
 
Then we talk’d of coldness and pallor,
    And of things with blinded eyes
That stared at the golden stillness
    Of the moon in those lighted skies;
 
And of souls, at morning wrestling
    In the dust with passion and moan,
So far away at evening
    In the silence of worlds unknown.
 
But a delicate wind beside us
    Was rustling the dusky hours,
As it gather’d the dewy odors
    Of the snowy jessamine-flowers.
 
And I gave you a spray of the blossoms,
    And said: “I shall never know
How the hearts in the land are breaking,
    My dearest, unless you go.”

Source: “Words for the Hour”: A New Anthology of American Civil War Poetry, edited by Faith Barrett and Cristanne Miller (University of Massachusetts Press, 2005)