Grim men lifeless stir

in their sodden boots

And steel their veins for cannon roar,

Spur their tired, silent stallions—

Their foaming, bleeding stallions and hung

slaughtered hens, they shoulder

Through vermilion, crackling days,

Clamoring their way through cotton

Dove as coal is dark,

Sheol shatters the stars and rains

Upon the shoeless, silver men,

Sixty miles, who churn

To the sequin shores of the sea,

As ever their iron horses stamp,

Their foaming, iron stallions

Cry and collapse to

The rhythm of cannon fire—

Of chain-mail shells and shrapnel

And the bone men and their horses

Hold war in their hearts

as gold and branding irons;

While opiate men in blue

Wait in the asylum for

The south to secede,

And silver men

Quiver in their camps

for the north to prevail