LITTLE GIFFEN.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 16, Issue 46, 16 March 1894, Page 15

LITTLE GIFFEN.

— Fbakk O. Ticknob.

Oat of the focal and foremost fire, Ont of the hospital walls aB dire ; Smitten of grape-shot and gangrene, (Eighteenth battle and he sixteen !) Spectre ! such as yon seldom see, Little Giffen of Tennessee I " Take him and welcome I " the surgeon b said ; Little the doctor can help the dead I So we took him and brought him where Tee balm was sweet in the summer air ; And we laid him down in a wholesome bed, Utter Lazarus, heel to head. And we watched the war with abated breath, Skeleton boy, against skeleton death. Months of torture, how many such ? Weary weeks cf tbe stick and crutch, And still a glint of the steel-blue eye Told of a spirit that •wouldn't die, And didn't. Nay, more 1 in death's despite Tbe crippled skeleton " learned to write " ; Dear Mother, at first, of course ; and then Dear Captain, inquiring about the men. Captain's aoßwer : of eighty-and-five Giifen and 1 are left alive. Word of gloom from tbe war, one day ; Johnston pressed at tbe front, they say. Little Giffen was up and away ; A tear —his firßt —as he bade good-by, Dimmed tbe glint of his bteel-bluo eye. "I'll write, if spared 1 " There was news of the light But none of Giifen. He did not write, I sometimes fancy that, were I king Of tbe princely knights of the golden ring, With tbe song of the minstrel in mine ear, And tbe tender legend that trembles here, I'd give the best on his bended knee, The whitest soul of my chivalry, For " Little Giffen " of Tennessee.