Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1871-03-30
John Burns Of Gettysburg.
By BRET HARTE.

Have you heard the story that gossips tell
OF Burns at Gettysburgl No All, well: 4
Brief il the glory that hero earns, -
B,iefer the story of poor John Burns: ~
He was the fellow who won renown,-
The only man who didn't back down
When the rebels rode through his native town !:
But held his own in the fight next day,
When all his townfolk ran away.
That was in July, sixty-three,
The very day that General Lee,
Flower of Southern chivalry,
BafHed and beaten, backward reeled
From a stubborn Meade and barren field.
I might tell you how, but the day before,
John Burns stood at his cottage door,
Looking down the village street,
Where, in the shade of his 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, he, thought it turned
The milk that fell, in babbling food
Into the milk-pail, red as blood!
Or how he fancied the hum of bees
We're bullets buzzing among the trees.
But all such fanciful thoughts as these
Were strange to 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-faet,
Slow to argue, but quick to act.
That was the reason, as 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 batterys heavy bass
Difficult music for men to face;
While on the left, where now the graves
Undulate like the living waves
That all the day increasingly swept
Up to the pits the rebels kept
Round shot plowed the upland glades;
sown with bullets, reaped with blades;
Shattered fences here and there
Tossed their splinters in the air;
The very trees were stripped 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,
And brooding barn-fowls left their nest
With strrnge shells bursting in each breast.
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 safron,-but his best
And, buttoned over his manly breast,
Was bright blue coat, with rolling collar,
And large gilt buttons, size Of dollar
With tails that the conntry-folk call ''swaller.'
He wore broad-brimmed, bell-crownsd hat,
White as the locks on which it sat-
Never had such sight been seen
For forty years on the village green,
Since old John Burns was a country beau,
And went to the "quiltings" long ago.
Close at the elbows all that day,
Veterans of the Peninsula,
Sunburnt and bearded, charged away;
And striplings, downy of lip and chin,-
Clerks that the Home Guards mustered in,-
Glanced, as they passed, at the hat he wore,
Then at the rife his right hand bore;
And hailed him, from out their youthful lore,
Win scraps Of slapgy repertoire:
"How are you, White Hat 7" s'Put her through
s'Your heads level" and "Rully for you'll"
Called him "Daddy''-begged he disclose
The name of the tailor who made his clothes,
And what was the value he set on those;
While Burns, unmindful of jeer and scott,
Stood there picking the rebels off,
With long brown rifle and bell-crown hat,
And the swallow-tails they were laughing at.
Twas but a moment, for that respect
Which clothes all courage their voices checke
And something the widest could understand
spake in the old mans strong right hand
And his corded throat, and the lurksng frown
OF his eyebrows under the old bell-crown;
Until, as they gazed, there crept an awe
Thro' the ranks in whispers, and some men say
In the antique vestments and long white hair,
The past Of the Nation in battle there,
And some Of the soldiers since declare
That the CLEAN Of his old white hat afar,
Like the crested plume of the brave Narvarre,
That day was their orifamme of war.
So ragged the battle. You know the rest
How the rebels, beaten and 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 COVE.
That is the story of old John Burns
This is the moral the reader learns:
In fighting the battle the questions whether
You'll show hats that's white, or feather