The Winter Remnant

[Intro | ] [Section 1: The Mud and the Log] They came to Valley Forge in winter's gray mold - Twelve thousand ghosts marching into the cold - No ribbons or flags for the regiment line - Just huts thrown together from green mud and pine - The French boy is shivering out in the sleet - With foreign silk rotting right off of his feet - He lives in the timber to watch the line hold - While Washington walks through the freeze of the mold - [Section 2: The Camp Fever] The smallpox is moving from bunker to bed - The rows in the clay-pits are written in red - No shoes on the sentry, no meat in the pan - Just Von Steuben shouting his European plan - He’s parsing out tactics to skeletons there - To turn a raw remnant away from despair - The bloody footprints are marked on the stone - A trail made of skin and of frozen-up bone - [Bridge: The Empty Forge] The fire is low - the iron is gray - We're burying twelve - at the start of the day - The Marquis is quiet - the General stands - With the weight of the spark - in their freezing-up hands - [Section 3: The Hard Remnant] The spring arrives ugly in mud and in rain - To wash from the valley the weight of the pain - No anthem is playing, no banner unfurled - Just a cold-headed army to face down the world - The price has been paid in the sickness and throes - The marrow is hardened in winter's worst blows - We rise from the ashes of Wallabout Bay - With nothing but iron to settle the day - [Outro] The reckoning's over. The footprints remain. Hold the line... in the winter rain. [Sound: A single, sharp, metallic clink of a frozen flintlock hammer dropping on an empty pan, instantly killing the room ambience] [Hard End]