They came like a run of salmon where the ice-fed Kennebec flings Its death at the arrow-silver of the packed and mounting host, They came like the young deer trooping to the ford by Eutaw Springs, Their new horns fuzzy with velvet, their coats still rough with the frost.

North and South they assembled, one cry and the other cry, And both are ghosts to us now, old drums hung up on a wall, But they were the first hot wave of youth too-ready to die, And they went to war with an air, as if they went to a ball.