RETURNING SOLDIERS.
RETURN OF THE THREE MONTHS' VOLUNTEERS,
AUGUST 5TH, 261.
WARM Welcome home, ye noble northern bands;
We bid you welcome with our hearts and hands,
Always our dear, but now our dearest ones,
Our closest kindred, fathers, brothers, sons.
Warm welcome, soldiers, howsoe'er you come,
Whether you keep step to the stirring drum,
Or maimed and feeble, faltering and slow,
Sad victims of the contest, and the foe,
Or borne on litters with expiring breath,
Or stretched in all the majesty of death.
We bid you welcome, oh, ye gallant braves,
To happy lives or honorable graves.
The dear survivor shall have love and fame,
The loyal dead a consecrated name-
Nor only now; for after years shall tell
The story of your deeds and triumphs well.
The generations that are yet to be,
With flowing eyes, your country's flag shall see,
Emblem of joy, pride, glory, and success,
Without stripe erased, one star the less,
As all its dazzling hues and dots expand
From sea to sea, o'er one united land,
Shall cannonize your memories late and long,
Subjects of eloquence and themes of song,
Martyrs and patriots, whose death sublime
Have made our Union holy for all time!
SKIRMISH AT POINT OF ROCKS, VA,,
Wo! for my vine clad home!
That it should ever be so dark to me,
With its bright threshold and its whispering wee. That it should ever come,
Fearing the lonely echo of a tread,
Beneath the roof-tree of my glorious dead!
Lead on! my orphan boy!
Thy home is not so desolate to thee,
And the low shiver in the linden tree,
May bring to thee a joy,
But oh! how dark the bright home before thee, To her who with a joyous spirit bore thee!
Lead on! for thou art now
My sole remaining helper God hath spoken,
And the strong heart I leaned upon is broken;
And I have seen his brow,
The forehead of my upright one, and just,
Trod by the hoof of battle to the dust.
He will not meet thee where
We blessed thee at the eventide, my son,
And when the shadows of the night steal on,
He will not call to prayer.
The lips that melted, giving thee to God,
Are in the icy keeping of the sod!
Aye, my own boy! thy sire
Is with the sleepers of the valley cast,
And the proud glory of my life hath pass'd,
With His high glance of fire.
Wo! that the linden and the vine should bloom,
And a just man be gathered to the tomb.
BATTLE EVE.
BEFORE THE BATTLE OF ATHENS, MO.,
AUGUST 5TH, '61.
OUR tents gleam soft in the moonlighted mist,
The soldiers slumber as soldiers do,
But I lie awake and look up to the stars,
And remember my love for you.
If the future is dark, yet the past is our own,
And fate cannot alter nor e'en subdue
That passionate dream, and this tender regret,
And the old fond love for you.
guns are yet warm on the fortified steep,
To-morrow the carnage we shall renew;
To-morrow night I shall wake to muse
On my old fond love for you?
God knows, God knows! Ere another eve
Yon fields must blush with ruddier dew:
If I never come back, then one heart dies
With an old fond love for you?
MY COUNTRY-I WEEP FOR THEE.
BURNING OF THE VILLAGE OF HAMPTON, va.,
AUGUST 8TH, '61.
IF ever man had cause to weep,
Ay, weep as man-strong man-alone can weep,
That cause is now! Now, may he bow his head,
And shade with trembling hand his burning eyes,
While down his cheek the scalding drops of grief
May course their way unchecked and unreproved
By those whose brows serene with shame would glow,
To own the presence of a single tear,
If shed for cause less grevious and sad,
Than this, o'er which shame not e'en they to weep!
When in the gloom of Valley Forge'Mid winter's chilling blast, and sleeting storm,'Tis said that Washington-our nation's chiefOft knelt in prayer before his people's God, And praying, wept-wept tears of voiceless woe, Perhaps, as Christ once kneeling, prayed and wept, In the seclusion of Gethsemanie's shade, Till tears of anguish turned to tears of blood, So poignant was the agony he felt, To find the human race so lost to him, So lost to truth, to virtue, and to God! Think ye he would not weep as he then wept, Were he still in our midst in mortal form,— Thus to behold poor mankind now as lost
To reason's sway, as they then were to God? Think ye that Washington would shame to weep, Could he but see—as you and I now see
The passing scenes and acts of life to-day!
To see the soil once drenched with the warm blood
Of patriot sires, in Freedom's cause arrayed,
Now wet again—not by the blood of foes
From foreign climes transported hence to slay,
But by the liquid life of patriot sons,
Of such brave sires-ay, brothers of one blood,
Met face to face, with gleaming swords upraised,
And glistening bayonets, in war's fierce strife,
Directed 'gainst each other's vengeful breast?—
Alas! who would not weep?
There is a time when tears
Belong to other than a maiden's eyes:-
When hearts, bold in the consciousness of might,
May without shame forget their stern manhood,
And like a very child bow down and weep!
Weep for a People's happiness destroyed,
Weep for the dream of promised greatness gone,
Weep for sweet hope departed with the day,
Which 'mid the gloom of night will pass away,
When Freedom's sons prove basely recreant
To the great TRUST their sires in them reposed,
And leave the honered citadel of State-
By four and thirty Pillars vast made strong,―
All shatter'd by the sacrilegious hands,
Of fiends incarnate, who despise all law,
And the pure altar of Fraternal Right
Besmeared with blood, in its defence poured out,
While faith appalled, will disappointed frown,
And Liberty close veil her face and weep!
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