  BY THOMAS AIRD. CAMPAIGN THE FIRST."Glory of War, my heart beat time to thee, In my young day; but there—behold the end!" The Old Soldier said: 'twas by his evening fire— Winter the time: so saving, out he jerked His wooden leg before him. With a look Half comic, half pathetic, his grey head Turned down askance, the pigtail out behind Stiff with attention, saying nothing more, He sat and eyed the horizontal peg. Back home the stump he drew not, till with force Disdainful deep into the slumbering fire He struck the feruled toe, and poking roused A cheery blaze, to light him at his work. The unfinished skep is now upon his knee, For June top-swarmers in his garden trim: With twists of straw, and willow wattling thongs, Crooning, he wrought. The ruddy flickering fire Played on his eye-brow shag, and thin fresh cheek, Touching his varying eye with many a gleam. His cot behind, soldierly clean and neat, Gave back the light from many a burnished point. His simple supper o'er, he reads The Book; Then loads and mounts his pipe, puffing it slow, Musing on days of yore, and battles old, And many a friend and comrade dead and gone, And vital ones, boughs of himself, cut off From his dispeopled side, naked and bare. Puffs short and hurried, puff on puff, betray His swelling heart: up starts the Man, to keep The Woman down: forth from his door he eyes The frosty heaven—the moon and all the stars. "Peace be with hearts that watch!" thus, heaven forgot, And all its hosts, true to the veins of blood, Thoughtful his spirit runs:—"'Tis now the hour When the lone matron, from her cottage door, Looks for her spouse into the moonlit ways; But hears no foot abroad in all the night. Then turns she in: the tale of murder done, In former days, by the blue forest's edge, Which way he must return—why tarries he?— Comes o'er her mind; up starting quick, she goes To be assured that she has barred her door; Then sits anew. Her little lamp of oil Is all burnt out; the wasting embers whiten; And the cat winks before the drowsy fire. What sound was that? 'Tis but her own heart beating. Up rises she again; her little ones Are all asleep, she'll go and waken them, And hear their voices in the eerie night; But yet she pauses, loth to break their rest. God send the husband and the father home! "No one looks out for me in all this world, No one have I to look for! Ah poor me! Well, well!" he murmurs meek. Turning, he locks His lonely door, and stumps away to bed. CAMPAIGN THE SECOND.How fresh the morning meadow of the spring, Pearl-seeded with the dew: adown its path, Bored by the worms of night, the Old Soldier takes His wonted walk, and drinks into his heart The gush and gurgle of the cold green stream. The huddled splendour of the April noon; Glancings of rain; the mountain-tops all quick With shadowy touches and with greening gleams; Blue bent the Bow of God; the coloured clouds, Soaked with the glory of the setting sun,— These all are his for pleasure: his the Moon, Chaste huntress, dipping, o'er the dewy hills, Her silver buskin in the dying day. The summer morn is up: the tapering trees Are all a-glitter. In his garden forth The Old Soldado saunters: hovering on Before him, oft upon the naked walk Rests the red butterfly; now full dispread; Now, in the wanton gladsomeness of life, Half on their hinges folding up its wings; Again full spread and still: o'erhead away, Lo! now it wavers through the liquid blue. But he intent from out their straw-roofed hives Watches his little foragers go forth, Boot on the buds to make, to suck the depths Of honey-throated blooms, and home return, Their thighs half smothered with the yellow dust. Dibble and hoe he plies; anon he props His heavy-beaded plants, and visits round His herbs of grace: the simple flowerets here Open their infant buttons; there the flowers Of preference blow, the lily and the rose. Fast by his cottage door there grows an oak, Of state supreme, drawn from the centuries. Pride of the old man's heart, in many a walk. Far off he sees its top of sovereignty, And with instinctive loyalty his cap Soldierly touches to the Royal Tree— King of all trees that flourish! King revered! Trafalgars lie beneath his rugged vest, And in his acorns is The Golden Age! Summer the time; thoughtful beneath his tree The Veteran puffs his intermittent pipe, And cheats the sweltering hours; yet noting oft The flight of bird, and exhalation far Quivering and drifting o'er the fallow field, And the great cloud rising upon the noon, The sultry smithy of the thunder-forge. Anon the weekly journal of events And what it suffers—justice-loosened wrath Falling from Heaven upon unrighteous states, Famine, and plague, earthquake, and flood, and fire; Lean Sorrow tracking still the bread-blown Sin; A spirit of lies; high-handed wrong; the curse Of ignorance crass and fat stupidity; Glib demagogue tongues that sow the dragon-teeth Of wars along the valleys of the earth; And maddened nations at their contre-dance Of revolutions, when each bloody hour Comes staggering in beneath its load of crimes, Enough to bend the back of centuries. The sun goes down the western afternoon, Lacing the clouds with his diverging rays: Homeward the children from the village school Come whooping on; but aye their voices fall, As aye they turn unto the old man's door— So much they love him. He their progress notes In learning, and has prizes for their zeal, Flowers for the girls, and fruit, hooks for the boys, Whistles, and cherry-stones; and, to maintain The thews and sinews of our coming men, He makes them run and leap upon the green. The nodding wain has borne the harvest home, And yellowing apples spot the orchard trees: Now may you oft the Old Soldado see Stumping relieved against the evening sky Along the ferny height—so much he loves Its keen and wholesome air; nor less he loves To hear the rustling of the fallen leaves, Swept by the wind along the glittering road, As home he goes beneath the autumnal moon. Thus round the starry girdle of the year His spirit circles thankfully. Not grieved When winter comes once more, with chosen books He sits with Wisdom by his evening fire; Puff goes his cheerful pipe; by turns he works; And ever from his door, before he sleeps, He views the stars of night, and thinks of Him Whose simplest fiat is the birth of worlds. CAMPAIGN THE THIRD.Lo! yonder sea-mew seeks the inland moss: Beautiful bird! how snowy clean it shows Behind the ploughman, on a glinting day, Trooping with rooks, and farther still relieved Against the dark-brown mould, alighting half, Half hovering still; yet far more beautiful Its glistening sleekness, when from out the deep Sudden and shy emerging on your lee, What time through breeze, and spray, and freshening brine, Your snoring ship, beneath her cloud of sail, Bends on her buried side, carried it rides The green curled billow and the seething froth, Half looking at you with its wild blue eye, Then moves its fluttering wings and dives anew! Smoking his pipe of peace, wearing away The summer eve, the old Soldado sits Beneath his buzzing oak, and eyes the bird, With many a thought of the suggested sea. The veering gull came circling back and near: "What! nearer still?" the Veteran said, and rose, And doffed his bonnet, and held down his pipe: "Give me her message, then! O be to me Her spirit not unconscious from the deep Of how I mourn her lost! Ah! bird, you're gone. Vain dreamer I! For every night my soul Knocks at the gates of the invisible world But no one answers me, no little hand Comes out to grasp at mine. Well, all is good: Even, bird, thy heart-deceiving change of flight, To teach me patience, was ordained of old." Yes, all is ordered well. Aimless may seem The wandering foot; even it commissioned treads The very lines by Providence laid down, Sure though unseen, of all-converging good. Look up, old man, and see:— Along the road Came one in sailor's garb: his shallow hat, Of glazed and polished leather, shone like tin. A fair young damsel led him by the hand— For he was blind: and to the summer sun, Fearless and free, he held his bronzed face. An armless sleeve, pinned to his manly breast, Told he had been among the "Hearts of Oak." The damsel saw the old man of the tree, His queue of character, and wooden leg, And smiling whispered to the tar she led. Near turned, both stood. Down from her shoulder then The maid unslung a mandolin, and played, High singing as she played, a battle-piece Of bursts and pauses: keeping time the while, Now furious fast, now dying slow away, His pigtail wagging with emotion deep, The Old Soldier puffed his sympathetic pipe. The minstrel ceased; he drew his leathern purse, With pension lined, and offered guerdon due. "Nay," said the maiden, smiling, "for your tye Alone I played, and for your wooden leg; Yea, but for these, the symbols of the things You've done and suffered—like my father here." "Well, then, you'll taste my honey and my bread?" The Soldier said, and from his cot he brought Seats for the strangers; him the damsel helped, Bearing the bread and honey; and they ate, The damsel serving, and she ate in turn. When various talk had closed the simple feast, The strangers rose to go: "My head! my head!" The sailor cried, and fell in sudden pangs. They bore and laid him on the Soldier's bed. Brought the physician; but his skill was vain, For God had touched him, and the man must die. His mind was clear: "Give me that cross, my child, That I may kiss it ere my spirit part," He said. And from her breast the damsel drew A little cross, peculiar shaped and wrought, And gave it him. It caught the Soldier's eye And when the girl received it back, he took And looked at it. "This cross, O dying man, Was round my daughter's neck, when in the deep She perished from me, on that fatal night The 'Sphinx' was burnt, forth sailing from the Clyde. Her dying mother round the infant's neck This holy symbol, with her blessing, hung. Friendless at home, I took my only child, Bound to the Western World, where we had friends. Scarce out of port, up flamed our ship on fire, With crowding terrors through the umbered night. O! what a shout of joy, when through the gloom That walled us round within our glaring vault, Spectral and large, we saw the ships of help. Our boats were lowered; the first, o'ercrowded, swamped; Down to the second, as it lurched away, I flung my child: the monstrous waves went by With backs like blood: the sudden-shifting boat Is off with one, another has my babe. I sprung to save her—all the rest is drear, Grisly confusion, till I found me laid, On some far island, in a fisher's hut. Me, as they homeward scudded past the fire, Those lonely farmers of the deep picked up, Floating away, and rubbed to vital heat; And through the fever-gulf that had me next, With simple love they brought my weary life. The shores and islands round, for lingering news Of people saved from off that burning wreck, O! how I haunted then; but of my child No man had heard. Hopeless, and naked poor, To war I rushed. This cot received me next; And here, I trust, my mortal chapter ends. But say, O say! how came you by this cross?" The dying man upon his arm had risen, Ere ceased the Soldier's tale: "She is thy child, Take her," he said; "and may she be to thee, As she to me has been, a daughter true, A child of good, a blessing from on high!" So saying, back he fell. Around his neck Her arms of love the sobbing damsel threw, And kissed him many a time. And then she rose, And flung herself upon the Soldier's breast— For he's her father too. And many tears, Silent, the old man rained upon her neck. "O wondrous night!" the dying tar went on, "Who could have thought of this! I am content. The Lord be praised that she has found a friend, Since I must go from her! That night of fire, And sent her boats to save you from the flame. Near you we could not come; so forth I swam, And to your crowded stern I fixed a rope, To take the people off. Back as I slid Along the line, to show them how to come, A child, upheaved upon the billow top, Was borne against my breast; I snatched her up; Fast to my neck she clung; none could I find To claim and take her: she was thus mine own. That night she wore the cross which now she wears. Why need I tell the changes of my life? In war I lost an arm, and then an eye; My other eye went out from sympathy, And home I came a blind and helpless man. But I had still one comforter, my child— My young breadwinner, too! From wake to wake She led me on, playing her mandolin, Which I had brought her from the south of Spain. She'll tell you all the rest when I am gone. Bury me now in your own burial-place, That still our daughter may be near my dust. And Jesus keep you both!" he said, and died. They buried him in their own burial-place. And many a flower, heart-planted by that maid And good Old Soldier, bloomed upon his grave. And many a requiem, when the gloaming came, The damsel played above his honoured dust. Not less, but all the more, her heart was knit Unto her own true father. He, the while, How proud was he to give her up his keys, Mistress installed of all his little stores; And introduce her to his flowers, and bees, Making the sea-green honey—all for her; And sit beside her underneath the oak, Listening the story of her bygone life. In turn she made him of her mother tell, And aye a tear dropped on her needlework; And all his wars the old campaigner told. And God was with them, and in peace and love They dwelt together in their happy home. |
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