The Angel Of Marye's Heights -- Poem

 

The Angel Of Marye's Heights

A sunken road and a wall of stone

And Cobb's grim line of gray
Lay still at the base of Marye's hill

On the morn of a winter's day.

And crowning the frowning crest above

Sleep Alexander's guns,

While gleaming fair in the sunlight air

The Rappahannock runs.

On the plains below the blue lines glow

And the bugle rings out clear,

As with bated breath they march to death

And a soldier's honored bier. 

For the slumbering guns awake to life

And the screaming shell and ball

From the front and flanks crash through the ranks

And them them where they fall. 

And the gray stone wall is ringed with fire

And the pitiless leaden hail

Drives back the foe to the plain below,

Shattered and crippled and frail.

Again and again a new lines forms

And the gallant charge is made,

And again and again they fall like grain

In the sweep of a reaper's blade.

And then from out of the battle smoke

There falls on the lead-swept air

From the whitening lips that are ready to die

The piteous moan and the plaintive cry

For "water everywhere.

And into the presence of Kershaw brave

There comes a fair-faced lad

With quivering lips as his cap he tips,

"I can't stand this," he said.

Stand what? the general sternly said

As he looked on the field of slaughter,

"To see those poor boys dying out there

With no one to help them, no one to care,

And crying for water! water!

If you'll let me go, I'll give them some.

Why, boy, you're simply mad;

They'll kill you as soon as you scale the wall

In this terrible storm of shell and ball,

The general kindly said.

Please let me go, the lad replied.
May the Lord protect you, then!

And over the wall in the hissing air

He carried comfort to grim despair

And balm to the stricken men. 

And, as he straightened their mangled limbs

On their earthen bed of pain, 

The whitening lips all eagerly quaffed

From the canteen's mouth the cooling draught

And blessed him again and again.

Like Daniel of old in the lion's den,

He walked thought the murderous air
With never a breath of the leaden air

To touch or to tear his gray-clad form,

For the hand of God was there.

And I am sure in the Book of Gold,

Where the blessed angel writes

The names that are blessed of God and men

He wrote that day with his shining pen

Then smiled and lovingly wrote again,

The Angel of Marye's Heights. 

~ Walter A. Clark, 1908

Written in 1908 by poet Walter Augustus Clark (1848-1917) as tribute to the memory and humanity of Sergeant Richard Rowland Kirkland, (1843-1863) Company G, 2nd Regiment South Carolina Volunteer Infantry C.S.A. from Kershaw County, South Carolina -- the "Angel of Marye's Heights" during the Battle of Fredericksburg (December 11-14, 1862).