Desperate, frenzied, bewildered, blindly they fired on their own;
Like reeds in the whirl of the cyclone columns and colors went down.
Banner of stars on the right! Hurrah! gallant Gibbon is come!
Thunder of guns on the left! Hurrah! 'tis our cannon that boom!
Solid-shot, grape-shot and canister crash like the cracking of doom.
Baffled, bewildered and broken the ranks of the enemy yield;
Panic-struck, routed and shattered they fly from the fate of the field.
Hold them? We held them at bay, as a bear holds the hounds on his track;
Knee to knee, shoulder to shoulder, we met them and staggered them back;
Two hundred and fifty and two, we held their mad thousands at bay,
Met them and baffled and broke them, turning the tide of the day;
Two hundred and fifty and two when the sun hung low in heaven,
But ah! when the stars rode over we numbered but forty-seven:
Dead on the field or wounded the rest of our regiment lay;
Never a man of us faltered or flinched in the fire of the fray,
For we bore the banner of Freedom on the Gettysburg hills that day.
Tears for our fallen comrades--cover their graves with flowers,
For they fought and fell like Spartans for this glorious land of ours.
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