We fops and weaklings, who masquerade
As soldiers, sometimes, in black and gray.

We can manage to make a street parade,
But, in a fight, we'd be sure to run.
Defend you! pshaw, the thought's absurd!
How about April, sixty-one?
What was it made your dull blood thrill?
Why did you cheer, and weep, and pray?
Why did each pulse of your hearts mark time
To the tramp of the boys in black and gray?

You've not forgotten the nation's call
When down in the South the war-cloud burst;
"Troops for the front!" Do you ever think
Who answered, and marched, and got there _first_?
Whose bayonets first scared Maryland?
Whose were the colors that showed the way?
Who set the step for the marching North?
Some holiday soldiers in black and gray.

"Pretty boys in their pretty suits!"
"Too pretty by far to take under fire!"
A pretty boy in a pretty suit
Lay once in Bethel's bloody mire.
The first to fall in the war's first fight--
Raise him tenderly. Wash away
The blood and mire from the pretty suit;
For Winthrop died in the black and gray.