Ashtabula weekly telegraph. [volume] (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1853-1873, 1871-03-25
SELECT POETRY.
John Burns, Of Gettysburg.
nj nRET HARTB.


Have you heard the story that gossips tell
Or Burns of Gettysburgr Mol All, well;
Brief is the glory that hero earns,
Brieier the story Of poor John Burns
He was the fellow who won reuOwn--
The only man who didn't back down
When the rebels rode thro' his native town
But held his own in the fight next day,
When all his towns folks ran away.
That was in July, '63,
The very day that General Lee,
Flower of Southern Chiyalry,
Bafficd and beaten, backward rceled
From stubborn Mead and q barren field.
might tell how, but the day before,
John Burns stood at his cottage door,
Looking down the village street,
Where, in the shade of bis peaceful vine,
He heard the low of his gathered kline,
And felt their breath with incense sweet;
Or might say, when the sunset burned
The old farm gable, hc thought 1t turned
The milk that fell, in a babbling food,
Into the milk pail, red rs blood
Or how he tancied the hum of bees
Were bullets bumming among the trees;
But all such fanciful thoughts as these
Were strange to a practical man like Burns,
Who minded only his own concerns,
Troubled no more by fancies fine
Than one of his calm.eyed, long-tailed kine,-
Quite old fashioned and matter of fact,
Slow to argue, but quick to act.
That was the reason, MS some folks say,
He fought SO well on that terrible day.
And it was terrible. On the right
Ragged for hours the heavy fight,
Thundered the battery's double bass
Difficult music for men to face;
While on the left-where now the graves
Unduate like the living waves
That all that day unceasing swept
| Up TO the pits the rebels kept
Round shot plOwed the upland glades
Sown with bullets, reapcd with blades;
Shattered fences here and there
Tossed their splnters in the air;
| The very trees were stript and bare;
| The barns that once held yellow grain
Were heaped with harvests of the slain;
| The cattle beloved on the plain,
| The turkeys screamed with might and main,
| The brooding barn.fowl left their rest
With strange shells bursting in each nest.
Just where the tide Of battle turns
Erect and lonely stood old John Burns.
| How do you think the man was dressed?
| He wore an ancient long buff vest
Yellow as saffron-but his BEST
And, buttoned oyer his manly breast
Was a bright blue coat and a rolling collar,
And large gilt huttOn-siZe of Il dollar
With tails that the country folks call a "swal-
ler."
He wore bruad-brimmed, hellcrowned hat
White MS the look on which it sat.
Never had such a sight been seen
Fer forty years on the village green,
Since old John Burns was Il country beau,
And went to "quillings" long ago.
Close at his elbows all that day,
Veterans of the Peninsula,
Sunburnt and bearded, charged away;
And strplings, downy of lip and Chin
Clerks that the Home Guard mustered in
Glanced, as they passed, at the hat he wore,
Then at the rifle his right hand bore;
And hailed him, Ii ON out their youthful lore
With scraps Of Slangy repertoire:
"Hew are you, White Hat ?" Put hel
through"
Called him "Daddy"-begged he'd disclose
The name of the tailor who made his clothes
And what was the value set on those;
While Burns, unmlndful of jcer and scoff,
Stood there, picking the rebels of
With his long, brown rifle, and bell-crownet
hat,
And the swallow tails they were laughing nj
Twas but moment, for that respect
Which clothes all courage their voices check
And something the widest could understand
Spake in the old mans strong right band;
And his corded throat and the lurking fr0w
. OF his eyebrows under the old bell crown;
Until as they gnZed. there crept an awe
Through the ranks in whispers, and some me
: saw
In the antique vcstments and long white hair
The Past of the nation in battle there;
And some of the soldiers since declare
That the gleam of that old white hat afar,
Like the crested plume of the brave Navarro
That day was their oridamme OF war
So ragged the battle. You know the rest;
How the rebels beaten AMI backward pressed
Broke at the final charge and ran.
At which John Burns-a practical man
Shouldered his rifle, unbent his brows,
And then went back to his bees and COWS.
That is the story of old John Burns,
This is the moral the reader learns:
In fighting the battle, the questions whethe
You'll show hat that's white, or feather