The Muster

Suggested by the Two Days' Review at Washington

(May, 1865.)

The Abrahamic river--
  Patriarch of floods,
Calls the roll of all his streams
  And watery mutitudes:
      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.

According to a report of the Secretary of War, there were on the first day of March, 1865, 965,000 men on the army pay-rolls. Of these, some 200,000--artillery, cavalry, and infantry--made up from the larger portion of the veterans of Grant and Sherman, marched by the President. The total number of Union troops enlisted during the war was 2,668,000.