Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper/Volume 18/Number 451/On Broadway

by Etta W. Pierce

ON BROADWAY.

By Etta W. Pierce

A wave of streamers—a stifled hum,
Then the ringing of cheers throughout the welkin high,
And the sound of bugle and fife and drum,
As proudly the troops came marching by.

Marching by with their measured tread,
All bronzed by the sun of the Southern land,
Bayonets gleaming and banners spread—
The dauntless of heart and the strong of hand.
Oh, the old blood warmed in my veins that day,
And the tears leaped up so thick and so proud
I scarcely could see the street or the crowd,
As home came the regiment up Broadway.

For you see it was two long years before—
Ah me! they had seemed so many more—
When the leaves were green on the tender thorn,
And the linnets were singing amid the corn,
When my boy Charlie went marching away
With the gallant hundred of Company A.
He was young of mien—he was slender and fair,
With his laughing eyes and his yellow hair;
But dauntless as any, as loyal and true,
The lad of my heart in his soldier blue!
'Twas a dark and dreadful day, you know,
And what could I do but to bid him go,
And pray that God would take care of the rest?
Though he was my all, and 'twas hard at best.
Ah, there was never a doubt or a pause
When he pledged his fresh young life to the cause—
'Twas a heart's free gift, but I knew, at last,
The pain was over—the waiting past,
And that was why I was glad that day,
when I heard the sound of bugle and drum,
When I saw them coming so gallantly home—
My brave boy's regiment up Broadway!

Steadily—steadily, ah, what a sight
For my old dim eyes, when the noonday light
Fell on them close in the crowded way–
I looked for the banner of Company A.
It was there—high-waving, I saw it again
From the battle's baptism of purple rain,
Pierced with the bullet, and rent with the ball;
And the faces beneath it—I looked at them all—
I looked at them all, but the sunny hair
And the eyes of my darling, they were not there.
They were not there with their sparkle and shine,
Nor anywhere gleaming along the line,
And reeling backward to and fro
The street and the crowd they seemed to go.
I pressed through the ranks so brown and tall,
I asked where my gallant lad might be—
"Killed in the trenches!" they answered me
"Killed in the trenches!"—and that was all.
Under the light of that noonday sky,
Where the cheers of the crowd rang long and high,
To the sound of the music, so gallant and gay,
On went the regiment up Broadway.

I never shall look on my darling again
When the linnets are singing amid the grain.
Oh gallant head, oh ringlets of gold,
Oh blue eyes hid in the trenches' mould,
All that the wide world had for me
I have laid at the shrine of Liberty!