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.
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.
Our 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 Gethsemanies 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!
My country-oh! I weep for thee,
Beside the ruins of thy fall I weep!
Nor shame I for the sacred drops thus shed;
Because each sigh is now a bitter oath,
Each tear a seal, which makes the oath a bond,
To firm restore thee to thy pristine might,
Or with thee fall! 'Twere well to weep such tears:
They purge the heart, and to the soul give strength,
To do great deeds-when deeds are needed most.
Who loves his country therefore shame not now,
O'er her great woes, with me to weep!
ALL over our land, our beautiful land
Of meadow and hill and plain,
The golden harvests ripened stand,
And death is reaping the grain.
But not with the crooked hook or the scythe
Does the reaper arm him now;
For a harvest so vast those tools of the past
Would be deemed exceedingly "slow."
He gleans no more for the single stalk,
Nor counts what the stubbles yield;
But he draws from above the bolts of Jove,
And launches them into the field.
Hissing in wrath the red bolts fall,
Gleaming with lurid fire;
And he laughs when he hears the crackling of ears That meet in the levin's ire.
He strikes not single victims now—
'Twere a labor to great for Death;
For gathered afloat in ship or in boat,
He can blast them all at a breath-
Or smothered below, or aloft they go,
Dispersed in atom and shred;
N'importe the amount, for a sorry count
Would he make of the bits of the dead.
An insidious foe is Death no more,
But a conqueror, bold and frank,
Who proudly boasts that he marshals his hosts
And smites them rank by rank.
He drives at the mass with a sulphurous storm
Of leaden and iron rain,
And the screeching shell is the larum and knell To the hecatombs of slain.
Oh! Death is drunken with rage, and our land
Is red with the blood of his prey:
Not the sorrows of years nor rivers of tears
Will wash the traces away.
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