Explore "The College Colonel (Poems from Battle Pieces)" by Herman Melville on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
He rides at their head; / A crutch by his saddle just slants in view, / One slung arm is in splints, you see, / Yet he guides his strong steed-how coldly too.
He brings his regiment home- / Not as they filed two years before, / But a remnant half-tattered, and battered, and worn, / Like castaway sailors, who-stunned / By the surf's loud roar, / Their mates dragged back and seen no more- / Again and again breast the surge, / And at last crawl, spent, to shore.