Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, JOHN W. MORTON, by JAMES RYDER RANDALL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

JOHN W. MORTON, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Tinged with flame and sore beset
Last Line: Morton and forrest were as one.
Subject(s): Arms & Armor; Southern States; War; South (u.s.)


TINGED with flame and sore beset,
Where gunboat and rifle fire met;
Where cannon blazed from water and land
Upon the Donelson Southern band,
A gallant lad of nineteen years,
A stranger to tremor and to fears,
Stood by a battery piece and shot
The first shell in that crater hot.

His captain, Porter, smitten down
Where all the volleyed thunders frown,
Shouted, when borne in pain away:
"John, don't give up that gun, I say!"
"No! not while a man is left," replied
The lad, in the flush of martial pride;
And he kept his word to the utter end,
While a man could live in that river bend.

"No prison for me," grim Forrest said,
And thousands followed where he led;
But other thousands remained because
They bowed to Buckner's word and laws.
Whelmed by the girdling Northern men,
They marched to the captive's dismal den,
And the lad who fired the first gun past
Into that solitude sad and vast.

A few months more, and the daring boy
Breathed the air that the free enjoy—
A few months more, and he gaily went
Where dauntless Forrest pitched his tent.
Saluting the hero, he quickly gave
To the South's own "bravest of the brave"
A paper that said he was to be
The Wizard's Chief of Artillery.

A derisive smile swept over the face
Of the stern commander from his place.
"What!" he growled, "are you to wield
Command of my guns in war's fierce field?
Nonsense, boy, go grow a beard!"
And this was what the stripling heard.
But presently the Wizard's brow
Grew calm. "I'll try you, anyhow,"
He said, and from that setting sun
Morton and Forrest were as one.





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