Oh! warm rose our hopes to the White Star, oh! wild went our pleadings to heaven;

We knew, and we shuddered to know it, how fierce oft the rebels had striven;

We saw, and we shuddered to see it, the rebel flag still in the air;

She brings out the black hulk of Lookout, its outlines traced sharp in the skies,

All alive with the cans of our braves glancing down with their numberless eyes.

Ha! the darkness is roofed like an arbor with streakings of shrapnel and shell

But the battle is rolling still up, it has plunged in the mantle o'erhead,

We hear the low hum of the volley, we see the fierce bomb-burst of red;

Still the rock in the forehead of Lookout through the rents of the windy mist shows

The horrible flag of the Cross-bar, the counterfeit rag of our foes:

Portentous it looks through the vapor, then melts to the eye, but it tells

That the rebels still cling to their stronghold, and hope for the moment dispels.

But the roll of the thunder seems louder, flame angrier smites on the eye,

The scene from the fog is laid open-a battle-field fought in the sky!

Eye to eye, hand to hand, all are struggling-ha! traitors, ha! rebels, ye know

Now the might in the arm of our heroes! dare ye bide their roused terrible blow?

They drive them, our braves drive the rebels! they flee, and our heroes pursue!

We scale rock and trunk-from their breastworks they run! oh! the joy of the view!

Hurrah! how they drive them! hurrah! how they drive the fierce rebels along!

One more cheer-still another! each lip seems as ready to burst into song.

On, on, ye bold blue-coated heroes! thrust, strike, pour your shots in amain!

Banners fly, columns rush, seen and lost in the quick, fitful gauzes of rain.

O boys! how your young blood is streaming! but falter not, drive them to rout!

From barricade, breastwork, and rifle-pit, how the scourged rebels pour out!

It is

seems like the vestibule lurid that leads to the chambers of hell;

cleft with the fierce shooting cannon-flame, sprinkled with red dots of spray;

It is havoc's wild carnival revel bequeathed to the night by the day.

Dawn

breaks, the sky clears-ha! the shape upon Lookout's tall crest that we see,

Is the bright beaming flag of the White Star, the beautiful flag of the Free!

How it waves its rich folds in the zenith, and looks in the dawn's open eye,

With its starred breast of pearl and of crimson, as if with heaven's colors to vie !

Hurrah! rolls from Moccasin Point, and Hurrah! from bold Cameron's Hill!

Hurrah! peals from glad Chattanooga! bliss seems every bosom to fill !

Thanks, thanks, O ye heroes of Lookout! O brave Union boys! during time

Shall stand this your column of glory, shall shine this your triumph sublime!

To the deep mountain den of the panther the hunter climbed, drove him to bay,

Then fought the fierce foe till he turned and fled, bleeding and gnashing away!

No, no, for the battle is ending; the ranks on the slope of the crest

Are the true Union blue, and our banners alone catch the gleams of the west;

Though the Cross-bar still flies from the summit, we roll out our cheering of pride!

Not in vain, O ye heroes of Lookout! O brave Union

boys! have ye died!

One brief struggle more sees the banner, that blot on the sky, brushed away,

When the broad moon now basking upon us shall yield her rich lustre to-day:

cloup-treading host of the free!

The camp-fire shall blaze to the chorus, the picket

post peal it on high,

How was fought the fierce battle of Lookout-how won THE GRAND FIGHT OF THE SKY!

THE CHILDREN'S TABLE.

M. J. M. SWEAT.

While the wise men are all seeking How to save our native land; And the brave men are all fighting, Heart to heart and hand to hand:

While the grown-up women labor
For the soldiers night and day;
Would you have us children idle,
Minding nothing but our play?

Little hands we have, but willing;
Little hearts, but loving well
Those who languish sorely wounded,
Those who fill the prisoner's cell;
And we know the names of heroes

Who have fallen on the field
Gleam with never-dying brightness,
Blazoned on our country's shield.

We have toiled with busy fingers

Many days, to gather here
Little treasures that may tempt you
With full purses to draw near.
For they tell us that with money
Many great things may be done;
Never found it nobler uses

Since this big world was begun!

Let the great and glorious impulse
Now astir throughout the land,
Make us welcome as we greet you,
Coming with this new demand.
Give us then, O generous people!
Ready purchase of our wares,
And we'll give you children's blessings

Won from heaven by children's prayers! Metropolitan Fair, New-York, April, 1864.

"ONLY A PRIVATE KILLED."

BY H. L. GORDON.

"We've had a fight," a captain said, "Much rebel blood we've spilled; We've put the saucy foe to flight,

Our loss-but a private killed !" "Ah! yes," said a sergeant on the spot, As he drew a long, deep breath, "Poor fellow, he was badly shot,

Then bayoneted to death!"

When again was hushed the martial din,
And back the foe had fled,
They brought the private's body in;
I went to see the dead.

For I could not think the rebel foe,
Though under curse and ban,
So vaunting of their chivalry,

Could kill a wounded man.

A Minie ball had broke his thigh,
A frightful, crushing wound,
And then with savage bayonets
They pinned him to the ground.
One stab was through the abdomen,
Another through the head;

The last was through his pulseless breast,
Done after he was dead.

His hair was matted with his gore,

His hands were clenched with might, As though he still his musket bore

So firmly in the fight:

He had grasped the foeman's bayonet,
His bosom to defend.

They raised the coat-cape from his face-
My God! it was my friend!

Think what a shudder thrilled my heart!
'Twas but the day before
We laughed together merrily,

As we talked of days of yore.
"How happy we shall be," he said,
When the war is o'er, and when,
The rebels all subdued or fled,
We all go home again."

Ah! little he thought, that soldier brave,
So near his journey's goal,

That God had sent a messenger

To claim his Christian soul.

But he fell like a hero, fighting,

And hearts with grief are filled,

尊

And honor is his, though our chief shall say:

"Only a private killed!"

I knew him well, he was my friend;
He loved our land and laws;
And he fell a blessed martyr

To our country's holy cause.

And, soldiers, the time will come, perhaps,
When our blood will thus be spilled,
And then of us our chief will say:
"Only a private killed !"

But we fight our country's battles,
And our hopes are not forlorn,
And our death shall be a blessing
To millions yet unborn.

To our children and their children!
Then as each grave is filled,
What care we if our chief shall say:
"Only a private killed!"

BATTLE-WORN BANNERS.
(January 26, 1864.)

BY PARK BENJAMIN.

I saw the soldiers come to-day
From battle fields afar;

No conqueror rode before their way
On his triumphal car;

But captains, like themselves, on foot,
And banners sadly torn,

All grandly eloquent though mute,
In pride and glory borne.

Those banners soiled with dust and smoke,
And rent by shot and shell,

That through the serried phalanx broke, What terrors could they tell!

What tales of sudden pain and death

In every cannon's boom,

When even the bravest held his breath
And waited for his doom.

By hands of steel those flags were waved
Above the carnage dire,

Almost destroyed yet always saved,

'Mid battle-clouds and fire.
Though down at times, still up they rose
And kissed the breeze again,
Dread tokens to the rebel foes
Of true and loyal men.

And here the true and loyal still
Those famous banners bear;
The bugles wind, the fifes blow shrill,
And clash the cymbals where,

With decimated ranks, they come,
And through the crowded street
March to the beating of the drum
With firm though weary feet.

God bless the soldiers! cry the folk,
Whose cheers of welcome swell;

God bless the banners, black with smoke,
And torn by shot and shell!
They should be hung on sacred shrines,
Baptized with grateful tears,
And live embalmed in poets' lines
Through all succeeding years.

No grander trophies could be brought
By patriot sire to son,

Of glorious battles nobly fought,
Brave deeds sublimely done.

And so, to-day, I chanced with pride
And solemn joy to see

Those remnants from the bloody tide
Of victory!

OUR HERO-DEAD.

BY CHARLES BOYNTON HOWELL.

From their labors nobly done,
From their battles bravely won,
'Neath the earth's cold sod they lie
Resting calmly, silently.

Sleep their sacred patriot forms,
Where war's tempests and alarms
Cannot reach them-cannot smite
Them to earth in camp or fight..

Some passed from the realms of life
In the battle's sanguine strife,
Smitten down, in carnage, low
By the hand of dastard foe;
Who would pluck the beaming stars
From our flag, invoking Mars
To look on their deeds of blood
With the mien of gratitude.

Mourners, in whose every heart
There has entered sorrow's dart,
Sorrow for the loved ones gone
To the confines of the tomb-
Seek the graves of warriors slain
On the battle's gory plain,
Or sent to the realms of death
By disease's fatal breath.

Sacrificing self they fought
That the land, with treason fraught,
Might rise, phoenix-like, again
From her agonizing pain;

That the traitorous hordes that aim
At their country's name and fame,
Might be conquered in the fray,
And insure us triumph's day.

Alexander, brave and bold,
In the chivalrous days of old,
Did not nobler deeds perform
In the stirring battle-storm,
On Europa's bloody soil,
Than our hardy sons of toil,
Have, when so intrepidly
Battling for our liberty.

'Twas a Minie ball that struck him; it entered at the side,

And they did not think it fatal till the morning that he died.

So when he found that he must go, he called me to his bed,

And said: "You'll not forget to write when you hear that I am dead?

And you'll tell them how I loved them and bid them all good-by?

Say I tried to do the best I could, and did not fear to die;

And underneath my pillow there's a curl of golden

I send you back his hymn-book, and the cap he used

to wear,

And a lock, I cut the night before, of his bright, curling hair.

I send you back his Bible. The night before he died, We turned its leaves together, as I read it by his side. I've kept the belt he always wore; he told me so to do: It has a hole upon the side-'tis where the ball went through.

So now I've done his bidding; there's nothing more to tell;

But I shall always mourn with you the boy we loved so well. -Evangelist.

STRIKE!

BY EDWARD S. ELLIS.

From New-England's granite mountains,
From the North's resounding woods,
From the far West's flashing fountains,
Pour the living human floods.

Onward sweeps the arouséd nation,
From the lakes and streams and sea;
Onward for their home's salvation,
And the fight for liberty.

Deeds, not words, make men immortal
In this grand, heroic age;
He who wills can ope the portal
To a name on history's page.

Know ye not that revolutions

Are the throes of struggling Right? In these national ablutions

It must triumph over Might.

What though but a child in learning,

When the war-note onward rolls, While our country's fate is turning,

'Tis not heads we need-but souls.

Some must make their names historic,
Who, the future soon will tell ;
Some must perform deeds heroic
And the roll of glory swell.

Strike then for the truth eternal;

Strike then, for the cause is just; Strike then at the wrong infernal, Till it bites again the dust.

THE BATTLE.

Give them a shell boys! give them a shell!

They are coming over the hill; You can see their widening columns swell; You can hear their bugles trill. Give them a shell, boys! Aim her straight! Ready! Pull lanyard! Off she goes! Hear her skurry and scream in hate.

Pouff! She's done for a dozen foes!

Give them grape, boys! give them grape!
They are coming a little too near.
Each dusky bulk is gaining a shape,

And their tramp is loud and clear.

Give them grape, boys! Steady! Fire!
Now, boys, go to work with a will!
Sight that gun a little bit higher.
Right!-a gap that twenty can fill !

Give them lead, boys! give them lead!

Up with the infantry! Load, boys, load!
Where's Joe Lane? Poor fellow he's dead;
Many of us must travel his road!
Give them lead, boys! On they come,

With columns massed in a fierce attack.
Think of your dear ones safe at home!

Stand by your guns, boys! Drive them back!

Give them steel, boys! give them steel!

They fight like devils! At them again! Their charge is broken! they pause, they reel ! After them, boys, with might and main ! Give them steel, boys! See how they run! I'm hit-just here--but never mind me. Lay me down by the side of that gun,

And after the rest with a three times three!

Give them a cheer, boys! give them a cheer!
Let them know we have won the fight!
I'm dying now; you can bury me here.

Dig deep, boys, and do it to-night.
There's one at home--you can give her my sword,
(You know whom I mean,) and say that I
Have always been true to my plighted word-
For my country and her I am glad to die.

WHAT THE BIRDS SAID.

BY JOHN G. WHITTIER.

The birds, against the April wind,

Flew Northward, singing as they flew ; They sang: "The land we leave behind Has swords for corn-blades, blood for dew."

"O wild-birds! flying from the South,

What saw and heard ye, gazing down ?" "We saw the mortar's upturned mouth, The sickened camp, the blazing town

"Beneath the bivouac's starry lamps,

We saw your march-worn children die; In shrouds of moss, in cypress swamps, We saw your dead uncoffined lie.

"We heard the starving prisoner's sighs; And saw, from line and trench, your sons Follow our flight with home-sick eyes Beyond the battery's smoking guns."

"And heard and saw ye only wrong

And pain," I cried, "O wing-worn flocks ?" "We heard," they sang, "the freedman's song, The crash of slavery's broken locks! "We saw from new, uprising States

The treason-nursing mischief spurned,
As, crowding freedom's ample gates,
The long-estranged and lost returned.
"O'er dusky faces, seamed and old,

And hands horn-hard with unpaid toil,
With hope in every rustling fold,

We saw your star-dropt flag uncoil.

"And, struggling up through sounds accursed, A grateful murmur clomb the air,

A whisper scarcely heard at first,

It filled the listening heavens with prayer.

"And sweet and far, as from a star,

Replied a voice which shall not cease,
Till, drowning all the noise of war,
It sings the blessed songs of peace!"

So to me, in a doubtful day

Of chill and slowly-greening spring, Low stooping from the cloudy gray, The wild-birds sang or seemed to sing.

They vanished in the misty air,

The song went with them in their flight; But lo! they left the sunset fair, And in the evening there was light.

DOWN BY THE RAPIDAN.

How, like a dream of childhood, the sweet May-day goes by!

A golden brightness gilds the air, a rose-flush paints the sky;

And the southern winds come bearing in their freights of rare perfume

From the far-off country valleys, where the spring flowers are in bloom.