Shall come to the secret place
Of the corpse in the foeman's land._

Watch and fast, march and fight--clutch your gun?
Day-fights and night-fights; sore is the strees;
Look, through the pines what line comes on?
Longstreet slants through the hauntedness?
'Tis charge for charge, and shout for yell:
Such battles on battles oppress--
But Heaven lent strength, the Right strove well,
And emerged from the Wilderness.

_Emerged, for the way was won;
But the Pillar of Smoke that led
Was brand-like with ghosts that went up
Ashy and red._

None can narrate that strife in the pines,
A seal is on it--Sabaean lore!
Obscure as the wood, the entangled rhyme
But hints at the maze of war--
Vivid glimpses or livid through peopled gloom,
And fires which creep and char--
A riddle of death, of which the slain
Sole solvers are.

_Long they withhold the roll
Of the shroudless dead. It is right;
Not yet can we bear the flare
Of the funeral light._