The Muster

Suggested by the Two Days' Review at Washington.

The Abrahamic river —
Patriarch of floods,
Calls the roll of all his streams
And watery multitudes:
Torrent cries to torrent,
The rapids hail the fall;
With shouts the inland freshets
Gather to the call.

The quotas of the Nation,
Like the water-shed of waves,
Muster into union —
Eastern warriors, Western braves.

Martial strains are mingling,
Though distant far the bands,
And the wheeling of the squadrons
Is like surf upon the sands.

The bladed guns are gleaming —
Drift in lengthened trim,
Files on files for hazy miles —
Nebulously dim.

O Milky Way of armies —
Star rising after star,
New banners of the Commonwealths,
And eagles of the War.

The Abrahamic river
To sea-wide fullness fed,
Pouring from the thaw-lands
By the God of floods is led:
His deep enforcing current
The streams of ocean own,
And Europe's marge is evened
By rills from Kansas lone.