A Second Review Of The Grand Army Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AAABCCCCCBCB DDDDDEFFFFFE GGGECCCE HHHIJJJK LLLAMMMA AAAKNNNK GGOGBPPPB QQQBAAABI read last night of the grand review | A |
In Washington's chiefest avenue | A |
Two hundred thousand men in blue | A |
I think they said was the number | B |
Till I seemed to hear their trampling feet | C |
The bugle blast and the drum's quick beat | C |
The clatter of hoofs in the stony street | C |
The cheers of people who came to greet | C |
And the thousand details that to repeat | C |
Would only my verse encumber | B |
Till I fell in a reverie sad and sweet | C |
And then to a fitful slumber | B |
- | |
When lo in a vision I seemed to stand | D |
In the lonely Capitol On each hand | D |
Far stretched the portico dim and grand | D |
Its columns ranged like a martial band | D |
Of sheeted spectres whom some command | D |
Had called to a last reviewing | E |
And the streets of the city were white and bare | F |
No footfall echoed across the square | F |
But out of the misty midnight air | F |
I heard in the distance a trumpet blare | F |
And the wandering night winds seemed to bear | F |
The sound of a far tattooing | E |
- | |
Then I held my breath with fear and dread | G |
For into the square with a brazen tread | G |
There rode a figure whose stately head | G |
O'erlooked the review that morning | E |
That never bowed from its firm set seat | C |
When the living column passed its feet | C |
Yet now rode steadily up the street | C |
To the phantom bugle's warning | E |
- | |
Till it reached the Capitol square and wheeled | H |
And there in the moonlight stood revealed | H |
A well known form that in State and field | H |
Had led our patriot sires | I |
Whose face was turned to the sleeping camp | J |
Afar through the river's fog and damp | J |
That showed no flicker nor waning lamp | J |
Nor wasted bivouac fires | K |
- | |
And I saw a phantom army come | L |
With never a sound of fife or drum | L |
But keeping time to a throbbing hum | L |
Of wailing and lamentation | A |
The martyred heroes of Malvern Hill | M |
Of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville | M |
The men whose wasted figures fill | M |
The patriot graves of the nation | A |
- | |
And there came the nameless dead the men | A |
Who perished in fever swamp and fen | A |
The slowly starved of the prison pen | A |
And marching beside the others | K |
Came the dusky martyrs of Pillow's fight | N |
With limbs enfranchised and bearing bright | N |
I thought perhaps 'twas the pale moonlight | N |
They looked as white as their brothers | K |
- | |
And so all night marched the nation's dead | G |
With never a banner above them spread | G |
Nor a badge nor a motto brandished | O |
No mark save the bare uncovered head | G |
Of the silent bronze Reviewer | B |
With never an arch save the vaulted sky | P |
With never a flower save those that lie | P |
On the distant graves for love could buy | P |
No gift that was purer or truer | B |
- | |
So all night long swept the strange array | Q |
So all night long till the morning gray | Q |
I watched for one who had passed away | Q |
With a reverent awe and wonder | B |
Till a blue cap waved in the length'ning line | A |
And I knew that one who was kin of mine | A |
Had come and I spake and lo that sign | A |
Awakened me from my slumber | B |
Bret Harte (francis)
(1)
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