Gettysburg

That hallowed ground in Pennsylvania
where the armies fiercely strove
at the high water mark of the Confederacy
for every hill top and forest grove.

Here were settled their great issues
rending our nation’s heart
in a violent storm of acrimony
that can’t stop when once they start.

Lee and Mead’s chance meeting
took three days to run its course,
and the flower of American manhood
was surrendered up to brutal force.

Yankees and Rebels together
learned how the other could fight,
each convinced completely
their cause was just and right.

As the cannonade was lifted
from the battle lines they went
in shocked and somber sorrow
back to a sheltering tent.

There bandsmen scraped their fiddles
and the regimental trumpeters
joined in with the drummer boys
to churn up quite a stir.

They had the boys a steppin’
and hootin’ right out loud,
they seemed to be a lifting
the day’s dark dreary cloud.

For the memory of men a dying
would not soon leave their head,
nothing in this world’s so bad
as seeing a friend lay dead.

The haunted eyes of a soldier
showed he was all alone,
the sole survivor of the group
with whom he had left home.

He would not dance that evening
nor smile or clap his hands,
nothing could renew his joy
not choirs or brass bands.

Close friends and brothers both were gone
losses deep and sad,
in the vacant stares of melancholy
no joy was to be had.

But others danced with passion
to the fiddle’s squawk and screech,
forgetting on that tomorrow
they were returning to the breach.

For today was but a battle
the war loomed yet ahead,
of those cavorting in the firelight
many more would soon lay dead.

Because on that fatal third day
to General Lee’s eternal regret
he sent George Picket’s division
to their spectacular death.

Soldiers from Maine and Alabama
fought each other to prevail
on the slopes of Little Round Top
where bullets flew like hail.

Many rows of wooden crosses
would sprout upon that field
watered with the blood of men
to produce this gruesome yield.

Abe Lincoln’s words summed it up as;
that war’s most violent explosion.
all involved were surely called
for their last full measure of devotion.


by Robert Quinn
all rights reserved