"The rest in the stupor of famine lay,
Save here and there a few
In death sat rigid against the guns,
Grim sentinels in blue;

And their Col'nel, he could not speak or stir,
But we saw his proud eye thrill

As he simply glanced to the shot-scarred staff,
Where the old flag floated still!

"Now, I hate the tyrants who grind us down, While the wolf snarls at our door,

And the men who've risen from us to laugh
At the misery of the poor;

But I tell you, mates, while this weak old hand
I have left the strength to lift,

It will touch my cap to the proudest swell
Who fought in the Dandy Fifth !"

FRANK H. GASSAWAY.

THE HOLLY BRANCH.

"YES, I shall be shot at dawn," as you say-
My life shall pass with the rising day,
All for this dead and scentless branch,
This thorny and withered holly spray.
You do not believe - well, it matters not;
Many have died for as small a thing
A glance, a smile, or a look of love,
Or a tear like the dews of spring.

This is the ilex of France; you see
That the flush of the scarlet fruit is fled
Nothing now but a withered branch,

--

Like a tender trust that is crushed and dead.
I have kept it long on my heart - why not?
Pressed down with a longing and yearning hate;
The bullets at dawn I shall scarcely feel,
For vengeance is mine! they will come too late!

You want my story of life-ah! well,
My life that has seemed such a weary way

To my tired heart, that was only gloom
When others around me were glad and gay.
"How came I here in this dungeon dread?"
There are many wronged come here to dwell,
Whose wrongs led down to the deeps of crime;
"Tis little I know, but 'tis hard to tell.

I shall ever remember that Christmas eve,
With its rosy glow and its golden light-
And the holly branch, with its glistening green,
And its thorn, that was flung to me that night.
I stood on the steep of the ruined wall,
Deep shadowed over with ilex sprays,
And I saw look down from a casement old
A fairy face with its saucy gaze.

She stood, framed in by the casement dim,
Her shoulders, like snow-flakes, were white and bare,
And sweeping back with a halo's light

I saw the gleam of her golden hair.
'Twas a vision of joy — entranced I stood
Looking up through the leaves that danced,
Till she, with a nod and an elfin laugh,
Cast down upon me this holly branch.

She sat all day at her work, alone
Weaving the threads of the filmy lace,
And under the sweep of her sunny hair
Shadows would darken her delicate face.
We often met. I was happy then
Happier still when I knew her mine
When the good old priest his blessing gave
As we wedded were at the holy shrine.

We went to Paris. 'Twas early spring
When we left our cot and the vines behind,
Our home was under the dreary eaves
Why was I made so strangly blind?
I was very poor
- but I gave her all,
My life was hers, and my soul

I meant

To be great one day for I labored hard

And she, my fairy, she seemed content.

She would sit at the window ( he saw her there)
To watch, she said, for my coming home

Would twine her white arms about my neck

-

And murmur "Lonely? I'm always alone."
I was often away on the stage each night,
Playing the part of a prince or a fiend;

In my home, and parting my love from me,
Was the "shadow that came between."

'Twas late one night when I reached my room,
After the play of the "Bridal Morn "

The lamp still burned her work still there
But the fairy light of my life was gone!
I know no more. I've been wandering long.
God! will this darkness have never an end?
Will the dawning bring me the light I crave?
Will death bring peace, do you say, my friend?

The war broke out, and we rushed to arms,

I met him there in the royal rank ——

When the cheers went up and the sabres clashed,
And swords blushed red with the blood they drank,
Side by side as we fought one day,

He was my colonel perhaps you know.
The hate in my heart grew dark as death.
You don't understand it? "Twas even so.

The hate in my heart grew stronger than I
I thought of my fairy, and all my woe-
Of the wrong he had wrought in his careless pride,
And the branch in my bosom that stung me so.
We mutinied riding 'mid smoke and fire

He ordered surrender! - I shot him down
He was my colonel — I laughed to see
The death-dews dampen his locks of brown.

-

After that? nothing. We failed, I think,-
But he lay on the field there cold and stark;
You wonder a holly branch caused it all –
But the thorns prick deep they have left their mark!
Well I have fought long in the ranks of France -
And I shall be shot when the night is fled;
But, bury my ilex - just here on my heart;
"Tis of little value you see it is dead!

"BROWNIE."

ANTOINETTE.

WARMLY sheltered from wind and rain
In a kiosque, Place de la Madeleine,
Some years ago in Paris I met
The little flower-girl Antoinette,

With her soft gray eyes, and her braids of jet
Crowning her head like a coronet,
Avenante, gentille, mais pas coquette.
When dandies ogled she turned away
And had no smile for les petits crevés.
She sat all day in a bower of bloom,
Like a shrine pervaded by sweet perfume,
Incense from roses and mignonette,

And saint-like seemed innocent Antoinette.
Deftly her slender fingers wove

Tokens of friendship and tokens of love,
Tokens for others, her heart was free,
And she sang at her task how joyously!

A Sister of Charity passed one day,
And paused to admire her floral display.
"What joy," said the Sister, "if I could bring
To my patients a floral offering!

But I must not think of it -woe is me!

I'm a very poor Sister of Charity,

And have no coin for the florist's fee."
Antoinette's smile was joyous and gay.
"Comme ça se trouve!" she hastened to say,
"I am overstocked with flowers to-day,
I cannot sell I must give them away.
Here's heliotrope and here's mignonette,
And here are roses with dew-drops wet,
A gem like a tear in each calyx set."
"Thanks," said the Sister, "now take from me
This little cross and this rosary

The gift of a friend ere she sank to rest,
By our Holy Father the beads were blest.
When you tell them o'er, give thought to me,
And a prayer for poor Sister Rosalie.'

It were long to tell how the enemy came
And circled the city with steel and fiame;

How his batteries vomited shot and shell;
How Paris struggled and starved and fell;
How fiends arose to the work of hell!
And flowers there were none to buy or sell.

In the Place Vendome! whom have we here
In the janty dress of a vivandière?
With a carbine swinging en bandoulière,
With a scarlet cap on her black curls set'
'Tis our little flower-girl, Antoinette.

Weeks roll on and the Terror is past;
The Versailles troops have entered at last.
Through the Arch of Triumph they storm their way,
But the rebels savagely stand at bay.
Fierce and erect on a barricade,

With the fatal scarlet banner displayed,
Grasping the staff, with her white teeth set, -
So the chief has ordered stands Antoinette.
"Vive la Commune!" burst from her lips,
And day grows night in a swift eclipse.
The air is swept by a storm of lead,

And the little vivandière falls dead.

Through his thick mustache the lieutenant hissed, As he glared on the fallen Communiste, "Take this dead she-devil away, and pitch

Her carcass into the nearest ditch!

But a Sister of Charity, robed in black,

With a thin white hand waved the soldiers back.
"Dare not to touch her!" she said; "she's mine.
Ecce signum! behold the sign!"

And, pressing a kiss on the gray lips cold,
She lifted the beads and the cross of gold.
"In the maddening whirl of an evil day
Her reason tottered and went astray.
Swept into the vortex of civil strife,
She sealed her faith with her glad young life.
And over her body shall prayers be said
In spite of the cause for which she bled."

FRANCIS A. DURIV GE.