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Skedaddle
The shades of
night were falling fast,
As through a
Southern village passed
A youth, who
bore, not over nice,
A banner with
the gay device,
Skedaddle!
His hair was
red, his toes beneath
Peeped, like
an acorn from its sheath,
While with a
frightened, voice he sang
A burden
strange to Yankee tongue,
Skedaddle!
He saw no
household fire where he
Might warm
his tod or hominy;
Beyond the
Cordilleras shone,
And from his
lips escaped a groan,
Skedaddle!
"Oh! stay," a
cullered pusson said,
"An' on dis
bossom res' your hed!"
The octoroon
she winked her eye,
But still he
answered, with a sigh,
Skedaddle!
"Beware
McClellan, Buell, and Banks,
Beware of
Halleck's deadly ranks!".
This was the
planter's last Good Night;
The chap
replied, far out of sight,
Skedaddle!
At break of
day, as several boys
from Maine,
New York and Illinois
Were moving
Southward, in the air
They heard
these accents of despair,
Skedaddle!
A chap was
found and at his side
A bottle,
showing how he died,
Still
grasping in his hand of ice
That banner
with the strange device,
Skedaddle!
There in the
twilight, thick and gray,
Considerably
played out he lay;
And through
the vapor, gray and thick,
A voice fell
like a rocket-stick,
Skedaddle!
__________________
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