On many a well-worn field When to our starry emblem, boys,
The trait"rous foe should yield.
But now, alas, I am denied
My dearest earthly prayer, You"ll follow and you"ll meet the foe,
But I shall not be there."
Wilse Hornback knew by the hush of the camp as the sound of his wonderful voice died on the far horizon that he had his laurels, too, and so he sang on while the mile square of camp went music-mad again as it sang with him--
"We are springing to the call of our brothers gone before, Shouting the battle cry of freedom.
And we"ll fill the vacant ranks with a million freemen more.
Shouting the battle cry of freedom."
Chorus:
"The Union forever! Hurrah, boys. Hurrah; Down with the traitor and up with the Star, While we rally "round the Flag, boys, We"ll rally once again, Shouting the battle cry of freedom.
We will welcome to our numbers the loyal, true and brave.
Shouting the battle cry of freedom, And although they may be poor, not a man shall be a slave.
Shouting the battle cry of freedom.
So we"re springing to the call from the East and from the West, Shouting the battle cry of freedom, And we"ll hurl the rebel crew from the land we love the best, Shouting the battle cry of freedom."
In the almighty hush that followed the billows of sound, some sweet-voiced fellow started Annie Laurie, and then sang--
"In the prison cell I sit"
with grand chorus accompaniment. Then Wilse Hornback started and Hen Withers joined in singing the Battle Hymn--
"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,"
and oh, G.o.d of Battles! how that army of voices took up the refrain--
"Glory, glory, hallelujah,"
and tossed and flung it back and forth from hill to hill and sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e till it seemed as though Lee and his cohorts must have heard and quailed before the fearful prophecy and arraignment.
Then the "tenore robusto" and the "ba.s.so profundo" opened a regular concert program, more or less sprinkled with magnificent chorus: singing, as it was easy or difficult for the men to recall the words.
You must rummage in the closets of memory for most of them! The Old Oaken Bucket; Nellie Gray; Anna Lisle; No, Ne"er Can Thy Home be Mine; Tramp, Tramp, Tramp; We are Coming, Father Abraham; Just as I Am; By Cold Siloam"s Shady Rill--how those home-loving Sunday school young boys did sing that! It seemed incongruous, but every now and then they dropped into these old hymn tunes, which many a mother had sung her baby to sleep with in those elder and better days.
The war songs are all frazzled and torn fragments of memory now, covered with dust and oblivion, but they were great songs in and for their day.
No other country ever had so many.
Laughter and badinage had long since ceased. Flat on their backs, gazing up at the stars through the pine and hemlock boughs, the boys lay quietly smoking while the "tenore robusto" a.s.sisted by the "ba.s.so profundo" and hundreds of others sang "Willie, We Have Missed You,"
"Just Before the Battle, Mother," "Brave Boys Are They," and the "Vacant Chair."
In a little break in the singing. Hen Withers sang a wonderful song, now almost forgotten. It was new to the boys then, but the bugler had heard it, and as Hen"s magnificent voice rolled forth its fervid words the bugle caught up the high note theme, and never did the stars sing together more entrancingly than did the "wicked mule whacker" and that bugle--
"Lift up your eyes, desponding freemen.
Fling to the winds your needless fears.
He who unfurled our beauteous banner Says it shall wave a thousand years."
On the glorious chorus a thousand voices took up the refrain in droning fashion that made one think of "The Sound of the Great Amen."
"A thousand years, my own Columbia!
Tis the glad day so long foretold!
"Tis the glad mom whose early twilight Washington saw in times of old."
By the time Hen had sung all of the seven verses the whole brigade knew the refrain and roared it forth as a defiance to the Southern Confederacy, which took on physical vigor in the days that came after, when the 200th Ind. went into battle to come off victorious on many a fiercely contested field.
Then the tenor sang that doleful, woe begone, hope effacing, heart-string-cracking "Lorena." Some writer has said that it sung the heart right out of the Southern Confederacy.
"The sun"s low down the sky, Lorena, The snow is on the gra.s.s again."
As Wilse Hornbeck let his splendid voice out on the mournful cadences, Si felt his very heart strings snap, and even Shorty drew his breath hard, while some of the men simply rolled over, and burying their faces in their arms, sobbed audibly.
Wilse had not counted on losing his own nerve, but found his voice breaking on the melancholy last lines, and bounding to his feet with a petulant,
"Oh, hang it!"
"Say, darkies, hab you seen de Ma.s.sa"
came dancing up from the jubilating chords of that wonderful human music box, and soon the camp was reeling giddily with the jolly, rollicking,
"Or Ma.s.sa ran, ha! ha!!
The darkies stay, ho! ho!!"
Then, far in the distance a bugle sounded "lights out," and the songfest was at an end; as bugler after bugler took it up, one by one the campfires blinked out, and squad after squad sank into quiet.
"I feel a heap better somehow," remarked Si, as he crawled under his blanket.
"Dogged if I hain"t had a sort of uplift, too," muttered Shorty, as he wrapped his blanket round his head. In the distance a tenor voice was singing as he kicked out his fire and got ready for bed--
"Glory, glory, hallelujah."