Who do you think that was marching steadily
on order’d forward to
engage the red-coats,
Of that brigade I tell, and how steadily it march’d,
And how long and well it stood confronting death. Who do you think that was marching steadily sternly
confronting death?
It was the brigade of the youngest men, two thousand strong,
Rais’d in Virginia and Maryland, and most of them known
personally to the General. Jauntily forward they went with quick step toward Gowanus’
waters,
Till of a sudden unlook’d for by defiles through the woods,
gain’d at night,
The British advancing, rounding in from the east, fiercely
playing their guns,
That brigade of the youngest was cut off and at the enemy’s
mercy. The General watch’d them from this hill,
They made repeated desperate attempts to burst their
environment,
Then drew close together, very compact, their flag flying in
the middle,
But O from the hills how the cannon were thinning and
thinning them! It sickens me yet, that slaughter!
I saw the moisture gather in drops on the face of the
General.
I saw how he wrung his hands in anguish. Meanwhile the British manoeuvr’d to draw us out for a
pitch’d battle,
But we dared not trust the chances of a pitch’d battle. We fought the fight in detachments,
Sallying forth we fought at several points, but in each the
luck was against us,
Our foe advancing, steadily getting the best of it, push’d us
back to the works on this hill,
Till we turn’d menacing here, and then he left us. That was the going out of the brigade of the youngest men,
two thousand strong,
Few return’d, nearly all remain in Brooklyn. That and here my General’s first battle,
No women looking on nor sunshine to bask in, it did not
conclude with applause,
Nobody clapp’d hands here then. But in darkness in mist on the ground under a chill rain,
Wearied that night we lay foil’d and sullen,
While scornfully laugh’d many an ar Cheap Louis Vuitton Handbags and Cheap louis Vuitton Bags
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