But there is a road from Winchester town,
A good, broad highway, leading down:

And there, through the flush of the morning light,
A steed as black as the steeds of night

Was seen to pass, as with eagle flight;
As if he knew the terrible need,

He stretched away with his utmost speed';
Hills rose and fell, but his heart was gay
With Sheridan fifteen miles away.

Still sprang from those swift hoofs thundering south,
The dust, like smoke from the cannon's mouth,
Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster,
Foreboding to many the doom of disaster.

The heart of the steed and the heart of the master
Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls,
Impatient to be where the battlefield calls;

Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play, With Sheridan only ten miles away.

Under his spurring feet, the road
Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed,
And the landscape sped away behind
Like an ocean flying before the wind;

And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace ire,

Swept on with his wild eye full of fire;

But, lo! he is nearing his heart's desire,

He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray
With Sheridan only five miles away.

The first that the general saw were the groups
Of stragglers, and the retreating troops;

What was done? what to do? a glance told him both,
Then, striking his spurs, with a terrible oath,

He dashed down the line, 'mid a storm of huzzas,

And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because The sight of the master compelled it to pause.

With foam and with dust the black charger was gray;

By the flash of his eye, and the red nostrils' play,

He seemed to the whole great army to say:

"I have brought you Sheridan all the way From Winchester town to save the day!"

Hurrah, hurrah for Sheridan !

Hurrah, hurrah for horse and man!

And when their statues are placed on high,
Under the dome of the Union sky,
The American soldiers' Temple of Fame,
There, with the glorious general's name,
Be it said in letters both bold and bright:
"Here is the steed that saved the day
By carrying Sheridan into the fight,

From Winchester, twenty miles away!

- From the "Poems of Thomas Buchanan Read." Used with permission of the J. B. Lippincott Company, publishers.

IN

Striking the people's souls with awe,

Dashed a rider, aflame and pale,

Never alighting to tell his tale,
Sitting his big bay horse astride -

"Run to the hills, for your lives!" he cried;
"Run to the hills!" was what he said,
As he waved his arm and dashed ahead.

"Run to the hills, for your lives!" he cried,
Spurring his horse, whose reeking side
Was flecked with foam as red as flame.
Whither he goes and whence he came

1 An incident of the flood at Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 1889.

Nobody knows. They see his horse
Plunging on in its frantic course,
Veins distended and nostrils wide,
Fired and frenzied by such a ride.
Nobody knows the rider's name
Dead forever to earthly fame.

"Run to the hills! to the hills!" he cried,
"Run, for your lives, to the mountainside!"

"Stop him, he's mad! Just look at him go! "Taint safe," they said, "to let him ride so." "He thinks to scare us," said one with a laugh, "But Conemaugh folks don't swallow no chaff. 'Taint nothin', I'll bet, but the same old leak In the dam above the South Fork Creek!" Blind to their danger, callous of dread,

They laughed as he left them and dashed ahead. "Run to the hills, for your lives!" he cried, Lashing his horse in his desperate ride.

Down through the valley the rider passed,
Shouting, and urging his horse so fast;
But not so fast did the rider go

As the raging, roaring, mighty flow
Of the water whose fury he fled before.
On he went, and on it came,

The flood itself a very flame
Of surging, swirling, seething tide
Mountain high and oceans wide.

God alone might measure the force

Of the Conemaugh flood in its furious course.
Behind him were buried under the flood
Conemaugh town and all who stood
Jeering there at the man who cried,
"Run for your lives to the mountainside!"

On he hurried in his fierce, wild ride,
"Run to the hills! to the hills!" he cried.
Nearer, nearer, came the roar

Horse and rider fled before.

Dashing along the valley ridge,

They came at last to the railroad bridge.
The brave horse paused, the rider cried,
"Run for your lives to the mountainside!"
Then plunged across, but not before
The mighty, merciless, flood with a roar
Struck the bridge and swept it away
Like a bit of straw or a wisp of hay.
But over and under and through that tide
The voice of the unknown rider cried
"Run to the hills, to the mountainside!
Run for your lives!" Thus the hero died.

- John Eliot Bowen.