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The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,

Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with

whip-stocks.

Agonies are one of my changes of garments,

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person,

My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.

I am the mash'd fireman with breast-bone broken,

Tumbling walls buried me in their debris,

Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my

comrades,

I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels,

They have clear'd the beams away, they tenderly lift me forth.

I lie in the night air in my red shirt, the pervading hush is for my

sake,

Painless after all I lie exhausted but not so unhappy,

White and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are bared

of their fire-caps,

The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches.

Distant and dead resuscitate,

They show as the dial or move as the hands of me, I am the

clock myself.

I am an old artillerist, I tell of my fort's bombardment,

[blocks in formation]

Again the long roll of the drummers,

Again the attacking cannon, mortars,

Again to my listening ears the cannon responsive.

I take part, I see and hear the whole,

The cries, curses, roar, the plaudits for well-aim'd shots,

The ambulanza slowly passing trailing its red drip,

Workmen searching after damages, making indispensable repairs, The fall of grenades through the rent roof, the fan-shaped ex

plosion,

The whizz of limbs, heads, stone, wood, iron, high in the air.

Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general, he furiously waves with his hand,

He gasps through the clot Mind not me-mind-the entrench

ments.

34

Now I tell what I knew in Texas in my early youth,

(I tell not the fall of Alamo,

Not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo,

The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo,)

'Tis the tale of the murder in cold blood of four hundred and

twelve young men.

Retreating they had form'd in a hollow square with their baggage

for breast works,

Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemies, nine times

their number, was the price they took in advance, Their colonel was wounded and their ammunition gone,

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