Middletown transcript., 1876-09-16
Selett 4oftru.
Army AND NAVY.
CUSTER's LAST CHARGE.

"Dead? Is it possible He, the bold rider,
CUSTER, our hero, the first in the fight,
Charming the bullets of yore to fly wider,
| Stunning our battle kings ringlets of light
Dead ! our young chieftaln, and dead all for
| saken
| No one to tell us the way of his fall
| Slain in the desert, and never TO waken,
Never, not even to victory's call ~
Comrades, he's gone, but ye need not be
grieving,
No, may my death be like his when | die
No regrets wasted on worlds am leaving,
Falling with brave men, and face TO the sky.
Deaths but q journey, the greatest must take
it:
Fame is eternal, and better than all:
Gold though the bowl be, tits fate that must
break it,
Glory can hallow the fragments that fall.
Proud for his fame that last day that he met
them
All the night long he had been on their track,
Scorning their traps and the men that had set
them,
Wild for charge that should never come
back.
There on the hilltop he halted, and saw them,
Lodges all loosened and ready to fly:
Hurrying scouts, with the tidings to awe
them,
Told of his coming before he was nigh.
All the wide valley was full of their forces,
Gathered to cover the lodges retreat
Warriors running in haste to their horses,
Thousands of enemies close to his feet
Down in the valley the ages had followed,
There lay the Sitting BULL g camp for prey
Numbers What recked he What rocked
those who followed
Men who had fought ten to one ere that day ?
Out swept the squadrons, the fated three
hundred,
Into the battle line steady and full;
Then down the hillside exultingly thundered,
Into the hordes of Old SIrTING BULL
Wild Ogallallah, Arapahoe, Cheyenne,
Wild Horses braves, and the rest of their
crew,
Shrank from that charge like u herd from
lion,
Then closed around the great hell of wild
Sioux.
Right to their centre he charged, and then
Hark to those ycls and around them, oh,
Over the hilltops the devils came racing,
Coming as fast as the waves of the sea
Red was the circle of fire about them:
No hope of victory, no ray of light,
Shot through that terrible black cloud with
out them,
Brooding in death over CUsrER's last fight.
THEN, DID HE BLENcH Did he die like
craven,
Begging those torturng 6ends for his life?
ny ! IL.
Flinched like coward or fed from the strife
No, by the blood Of our CUSTER no quailing
There in the midst of the devils they close,
Hemmed in by thousands, but ever assailing,
Fighting like tigers, all bayed amid foes
Thicker and thicker the bullets came singing,
Down 20 the horses and riders and all,
Swiftly the warriors round them were ringing,
Circling like buzzards awaiting their fall.
See the wild steeds of the mou ntain and
prairie,
Savage eyes cleaning from forests of name,
Quivering lances with pennons so airy,
War-painted warriors charging amain.
Backward again and again they were driven,
Shrinking to close with the lost little band;
Never a cap that had worn the bright SEVEN
Bowed till its warrior was dead on the strand.
OlOSer anu CLOSET tue uedtu-CifCic SEOWluB,
Ever the leaders voice, clarion clear,
Rang out his words Of encouragement glow
ing: -
eve can die but once, boys, but SELL YOUR
y. LIVES DAER."
Dearly they sold them, like Berserkers raging
Facing the death that circled them round;
Deaths bitter pangs by their vengeance as
suaging,
Marking their tracks by their dead on the
ground.
Comrades, our children shall yet tell their
story,
CusrsR's last charge on the Old SrrrINe BULL;
And ages shall swear that the cup of his glory
Needed but that death 10 render it full.
FREDERICK WHITAKER.