Complete Poetical Works. Bret Harte

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           All space breathes languor: from the hilltop high,

             Where Putnam's bastion crumbles in the past,

           To swooning depths where drowsy cannon lie

             And wide-mouthed mortars gape in slumbers vast;

           Stroke upon stroke, the far oars glance and die

             On the hushed bosom of the sleeping stream;

           Bright for one moment drifts a white sail by,

             Bright for one moment shows a bayonet gleam

             Far on the level plain, then passes as a dream.

           Soft down the line of darkened battlements,

             Bright on each lattice of the barrack walls,

           Where the low arching sallyport indents,

             Seen through its gloom beyond, the moonbeam falls.

           All is repose save where the camping tents

             Mock the white gravestones farther on, where sound

           No morning guns for reveille, nor whence

             No drum-beat calls retreat, but still is ever found

             Waiting and present on each sentry's round.

           Within the camp they lie, the young, the brave,

             Half knight, half schoolboy, acolytes of fame,

           Pledged to one altar, and perchance one grave;

             Bred to fear nothing but reproach and blame,

           Ascetic dandies o'er whom vestals rave,

             Clean-limbed young Spartans, disciplined young elves,

           Taught to destroy, that they may live to save,

             Students embattled, soldiers at their shelves,

             Heroes whose conquests are at first themselves.

           Within the camp they lie, in dreams are freed

             From the grim discipline they learn to love;

           In dreams no more the sentry's challenge heed,

             In dreams afar beyond their pickets rove;

           One treads once more the piny paths that lead

             To his green mountain home, and pausing hears

           The cattle call; one treads the tangled weed

             Of slippery rocks beside Atlantic piers;

             One smiles in sleep, one wakens wet with tears.

           One scents the breath of jasmine flowers that twine

             The pillared porches of his Southern home;

           One hears the coo of pigeons in the pine

             Of Western woods where he was wont to roam;

           One sees the sunset fire the distant line

             Where the long prairie sweeps its levels down;

           One treads the snow-peaks; one by lamps that shine

             Down the broad highways of the sea-girt town;

             And two are missing,—Cadets Grey and Brown!

           Much as I grieve to chronicle the fact,

             That selfsame truant known as "Cadet Grey"

           Was the young hero of our moral tract,

             Shorn of his twofold names on entrance-day.

           "Winthrop" and "Adams" dropped in that one act

             Of martial curtness, and the roll-call thinned

           Of his ancestors, he with youthful tact

             Indulgence claimed, since Winthrop no more sinned,

           Nor sainted Adams winced when he, plain Grey, was "skinned."

           He had known trials since we saw him last,

             By sheer good luck had just escaped rejection,

           Not for his learning, but that it was cast

             In a spare frame scarce fit for drill inspection;

           But when he ope'd his lips a stream so vast

             Of information flooded each professor,

           They quite forgot his eyeglass,—something past

             All precedent,—accepting the transgressor,

             Weak eyes and all of which he was possessor.

           E'en the first day he touched a blackboard's space—

             So the tradition of his glory lingers—

           Two wise professors fainted, each with face

             White as the chalk within his rapid fingers:

           All day he ciphered, at such frantic pace,

             His form was hid in chalk precipitation

           Of every problem, till they said his case

             Could meet from them no fair examination

             Till Congress made a new appropriation.

           Famous in molecules, he demonstrated

             From the mess hash to many a listening classful;

           Great as a botanist, he separated

             Three kinds of "Mentha" in one julep's glassful;

           High in astronomy, it has been stated

             He was the first at West Point to discover

           Mars' missing satellites, and calculated

             Their true positions, not the heavens over,

             But 'neath the window of Miss Kitty Rover.

           Indeed, I fear this novelty celestial

             That very night was visible and clear;

           At least two youths of aspect most terrestrial,

             And clad in uniform, were loitering near

           A villa's casement, where a gentle vestal

             Took their impatience somewhat patiently,

           Knowing the youths were somewhat green and "bestial"—

             (A certain slang of the Academy,

             I beg the reader won't refer to me).

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