O you daughters of the West!

O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you

wives!

Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Minstrels latent on the prairies!

(Shrouded bards of other lands! you may sleep-you have done your work)

Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp

amid us,

Pioneers! O pioneers!

Not for delectations sweet,

Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious,

Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment, Pioneers! O pioneers!

Do the feasters gluttonous feast,

Do the corpulent sleepers sleep, have they lock'd and bolted

doors,

Still be ours the diet hard and the blanket on the ground!

Pioneers! O pioneers!

Has the night descended?

Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop, discouraged, nodding on our way?

Yet a passing hour I yield you, in your tracks to pause oblivious,

Pioneers! O pioneers!

Till with sound of trumpet,

Far, far off the day-break call! Hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind.

Swift! to the head of the army! swift! spring to your places! Pioneers! O pioneers!

THE SOLDIER'S LETTER.

I.

Come up from the fields, Father! here's a letter from our Pete;

And come to the front door, Mother! here's a letter from thy dear son.

2.

Lo! tis Autumn :

Lo! where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder, Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages, with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind;

Where apples ripe in the orchards hang, and grapes on the trellis'd vines !

(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?

Smell you the buckwheat, where the bees were lately buzzing?)

Above all, lo! the sky, so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with wondrous clouds;

Below too all calm, all vital and beautiful,—and the farm prospers well.

3.

Down in the fields all prospers well :

But now from the fields come, Father! come at the daughter's

call;

And come to the entry, Mother! to the front door come, right away.

Fast as she can she hurries-something ominous-her steps trembling;

She does not tarry to smooth her hair, nor adjust her cap.

Open the envelope quickly!

O, this is not our son's writing, yet his name is sign'd;

O, a strange hand writes for our dear son-O stricken Mother's

soul!

All swims before her eyes-flashes with black-she catches the main words only;

Sentences broken,-" gun-shot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to the hospital,

At present low, but will soon be better."

4.

Ah! now the single figure to me,

Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and farms,
Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,
By the jamb of a door leans.

"Grieve not so, dear Mother!"

speaks through her sobs;

The just grown daughter

The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay'd: "See, dearest Mother! the letter says Pete will soon be

better."

5.

Alas, poor boy! he will never be better (nor may-be needs to be better, that brave and simple soul).

While they stand at home at the door, he is dead already.
The only son is dead.

But the Mother needs to be better,

She, with thin form, presently dress'd in black;

By day her meals untouch'd,—then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking,

In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing

O that she might withdraw unnoticed-silent from life escape and withdraw,

To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son!

THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS.

1819

DIRGE.

What shall we do now, Mary being dead,
Or say, or write, that shall express the half?
What can we do but pillow that fair head,
And let the Spring-time write her epitaph?

As it will soon, in snow-drop, violet,
Wind-flower, and columbine, and maiden's tear :
Each letter of that pretty alphabet

That spells in flowers the pageant of the year.

She was a maiden for a man to love,
She was a woman for a husband's life,
One that had learn'd to value far above
The name of Love the sacred name of Wife.

Her little life-dream, rounded so with sleep,
Had all there is of life-except grey hairs :
Hope, love, trust, passion, and devotion deep,
And that mysterious tie a Mother bears.

She hath fulfill'd her promise and hath pass'd.
Set her down gently at the iron door!
Eyes! look on that loved image for the last :
Now cover it in earth-her earth no more!

SAINT PERAY.

When to any saint I pray,
It shall be to Saint Peray.
He alone, of all the brood,
Ever did me any good :
Many I have tried that are
Humbugs in the calendar.

On the Atlantic, faint and sick,
Once I pray'd Saint Dominick :
He was holy (sure), and wise ;-
Was't not he that did devise
Auto-da-fès and rosaries ?
But for one in my condition
This good saint was no physician.

Next, in pleasant Normandie,
I made a prayer to Saint Denis,
In the great cathedral where
All the ancient kings repose;
But how I was swindled there
At the "Golden Fleece,"

he knows!

In my wanderings vague and various
Reaching Naples, as I lay
Watching Vesuvius from the bay,
I besought Saint Januarius.
But I was a fool to try him,-
Nought I said could liquefy him ;
And I swear he did me wrong,

Keeping me shut up so long

In that pest-house, with obscene
Jews and Greeks and things unclean :
What need had I of quarantine ?

In Sicily at least a score,
In Spain about as many more,
And in Rome almost as many
As the loves of Don Giovanni,
Did I pray to-sans reply:
Devil take the tribe! said I.

Worn with travel, tired and lame,
To Assissi's walls I came :
Sad, and full of home-sick fancies,
I address'd me to Saint Francis ;