SPRUCE Macaronis, and pretty to see, | |
| Tidy and dapper and gallant were we; | |
| Blooded fine gentlemen, proper and tall, | |
| Bold in a fox-hunt and gay at a ball; | |
| Prancing soldados so martial and bluff, | 5 |
| Billets for bullets, in scarlet and buff— | |
| But our cockades were clasped with a mother’s low prayer, | |
| And the sweethearts that braided the sword-knots were fair. | |
| |
| There was grummer of drums humming hoarse in the hills, | |
| And the bugles sang fanfaron down by the mills, | 10 |
| By Flatbush the bagpipes were droning amain, | |
| And keen cracked the rifles in Martense’s lane; | |
| For the Hessians were flecking the hedges with red, | |
| And the grenadiers’ tramp marked the roll of the dead. | |
| |
| Three to one, flank and rear, flashed the files of St. George, | 15 |
| The fierce gleam of their steel as the glow of a forge. | |
| The brutal boom-boom of their swart cannoneers | |
| Was sweet music compared with the taunt of their cheers— | |
| For the brunt of their onset, our crippled array, | |
| And the light of God’s leading gone out in the fray. | 20 |
| |
| Oh, the rout on the left and the tug on the right! | |
| The mad plunge of the charge and the wreck of the flight! | |
| When the cohorts of Grant held stout Stirling at strain, | |
| And the mongrels of Hesse went tearing the slain; | |
| When at Freeke’s Mill the flumes and the sluices ran red, | 25 |
| And the dead choked the dike and the marsh choked the dead! | |
| |
| “Oh, Stirling, good Stirling, how long must we wait? | |
| Shall the shout of your trumpet unleash us too late? | |
| Have you never a dash for brave Mordecai Gist, | |
| With his heart in his throat, and his blade in his fist? | 30 |
| Are we good for no more than to prance in a ball, | |
| When the drums beat the charge and the clarions call?” | |
| |
| Tralára! Tralára! Now praise we the Lord | |
| For the clang of His call and the flash of His sword! | |
| Tralára! Tralára! Now forward to die; | 35 |
| For the banner, hurrah! and for sweethearts, good-by! | |
| “Four hundred wild lads!” May be so. I’ll be bound | |
| ’T will be easy to count us, face up, on the ground. | |
| If we hold the road open, though Death take the toll, | |
| We ’ll be missed on parade when the States call the roll— | 40 |
| When the flags meet in peace and the guns are at rest, | |
| And fair Freedom is singing Sweet Home in the West. | |
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