The Red Zouave
The stars were bright, the breeze was still,
The cicada and the whippoorwill,
Alone disturbed the scene;
A streamlet down the dark ravine,
Hasted the gloomy spot to shun,
And bear its little tribute to Cub Run.
The wayward step of one astray,
He scared the whippoorwill away.
A soldier reels to the little rill,
And tries his sordid cup to fill,
Then dizzily pitches across the branch,
Too weak his mortal wound to staunch.
He wakes anon, but weaker yet,
For the stones with his oozing gore is wet,
Feebly he feels for his stolen store,
In his shirt, made redder by his gore!
But long ere the midnight cloud grows dark,
The Red Zouave lies stiff and stark.
Why did the dying miscreant stare?
Why stood upright his clotted hair?
He sees a phantom sentinel,
A skeleton-man and musket as well,
And the ghostly cry, Halt! who goes there?
Made his glazing eyeballs wildly glare.
The sentry's laugh was shrill, yet brief,
Ere he spoke these words to the dying thief:
'I left old England long years ago,
Where I plundered and plundered both high and low;
To escape at once from my crimes and fears,
I enlisted with Braddock for seven years.
'We crossed the sea and we cut a road,
Where there never had been a christian abode,
On our march, we encamped on a wooded height;
You lay at the very same place last night;
I stole from a comrade a half a crown,
And was whipped as a thief, till the blood ran down.
'I swore for revenge as we marched along;
The jeers of the men made my vengeance strong:
So Braddock I marked, when we lost the fight,
And shot him through ere I took to flight;
I wandered this terrible wilderness through,
And died of my wounds here, as you will do.
'Though I saw our Sergeant-Major fall,
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poem by Anonymous Americas
Added by Poetry Lover
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