The herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1893-1900, 1898-07-30

| through four years Of war that tried mems
| souls. THE AUTHOR.
"A song!" cried the men in the trenches,
IA song, and Wen sing 1t today!'
| (The Mausers spit through the tangled
| grass,
The shells burst over the bay,
And the weltering fire of a heat that is he
| Shoots down from the sun in the fray.)
IA song!" cried the men in the trenches,
"a song. and We'll sing it today!
A song of love and its skies above,
OF home and the old, old way"
They had stormed and carried siboney;
They had died in the ambush there.
| Brusque and Drowned old regulars,
And young cheeks smooth and fair
| Man to man they had stood up and died
Under Old Glory there
Man to man, in the sun-seethed tide
They had swept the hill and the foe defied
And now in the trenches, side by side,
| They lay on their burned backs bare.
1t was heat, heat, heat. and blazing gun;
Thirst-and the soggy trench
Pitiless shaft from ptiless sun
Blood and the sulphur stencil.
1t was blistered wound and powder sting
Blood and stagger and reel,
And the hyena-laugh of the white ghost
thing
That leaps from a womb of steel.
1t was voley and volley from Mauser gun
Thunder and roar from fleet,
And the answering crack of the Jorgenson
From the men who never retreat.
Ell Caney lay upon the right,
Steel-armored mid the trees.
And on the left the shotted threats
OF grim Aguadores.
Ell Moro stood across the bay,
Gun-crowned against the sky,
And from the heights of San Juan
The smokeless ghost-born fly.
1t was death above and death below,S
Barb wire and bleeding wound.
Thrst-and the sput of the sick ming
In the track of the Mauser sound.
1t was hell above as well as beneath,
The heart-killng knowledge and pain,
To know one must stand in the door of
death
Till ordered to enter again.
1t was volley and volley from Mauser gun,
Thunder and roar from fleet,
And the answering crack of the Jorgenson
From men who never retreat.
And now there falls silence
In the trenches on the night
Kneels at the knees Of night;
A silence, but more ominous
Than all the bullets are
The silence that precedes resolve
The dusk that limns the star.
Twas broken by song that swept
The singers from their feet
From trench to trench it sweled
Above the thunder of the Fleet,
And living lips and dying lips
Caught up the glad refrain
In triumph it rolled down the line,
In splendor back again:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph
shall wave
Ger the land of the free and the home of
the brave"
1t was volley and volley from Mauser gun,
Thunder and roar from fleet,
And then the charge of the Jorgenson-
And men who never retreat!
1t was picket of steel or wall of stone
The sweep Of a torrent along
The echoing notes of a victor tone
In the burst of battle song.
They swept Ell Caney as they ran,
They stormed the Spanish lair,
And on the heights Of San Juan
They placed the banner there
o, you who die in the trenches,
Singing the song of the free,
Do you know that time and space and cline
Are an endless song for thee?
o, We who die in the trenches,
o. We who never retreat,
DO you know that the bars of the shadowy
stars
Are rungs for your coming feet?
John Trotwood Moore in the Chicago
Times-Herald.