These thoughts passed through the mind in a moment’s flash, Then that mind turned to business. It was the calling Of seventy-five thousand volunteers.

Shake out the long line of verse like a lanyard of woven steel And let us praise while we can what things no praise can deface, The corn that hurried so fast to be ground in an iron wheel The obdurate, bloody dream that slept before it grew base.

Not the silk flag and the shouts, the catchword patrioteers, The screaming noise of the press, the preachers who howled for blood, But a certain and stubborn pith in the hearts of the cannoneers Who hardly knew their guns before they died in the mud.