LITTLE GIFFEN

OUT of the focal and foremost fire,
Out of the hospital walls as dire,
Smitten of grape-shot and gangrene
(Eighteenth battle and he sixteen!)—
Spectre such as you seldom see,
Little Giffen of Tennessee.

"Take him and welcome!" the surgeon said;
"Little the doctor can help the dead!"
So we took him and brought him where
The balm was sweet on the summer air;

And we laid him down on a wholesome bed-
Utter Lazarus, heel to head!

And we watched the war with bated breath-
Skeleton Boy against skeleton Death.
Months of torture, how many such!
Weary weeks of the stick and crutch;
And still a glint in the steel-blue eye
Told of a spirit that wouldn't die,—

And didn't. Nay, more! in death's despite
The crippled skeleton learned to write.
"Dear Mother," at first, of course; and then,
"Dear Captain," inquiring about "the men."
Captain's answer: "Of eighty-and-five,

Giffen and I are left alive."

Word of gloom from the war, one day:
"Johnston's pressed at the front, they say!"
Little Giffen was up and away;

A tear-his first-as he bade good-by,

Dimmed the glint of his steel-blue eye.

"I'll write, if spared." There was news of the fight;

But none of Giffen.-He did not write.

I sometimes fancy that, were I king

Of the princely Knights of the Golden Ring,
With the song of the minstrel in mine ear,
And the tender legend that trembles here,
I'd give the best on his bended knee,
The whitest soul of my chivalry,

For Little Giffen of Tennessee.

Francis Orray Ticknor [1822-1874]

ODE

Sung on the occasion of decorating the graves of the Confederate dead, at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S. C., 1867.

SLEEP Sweetly in your humble graves,

Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause;
Though yet no marble column craves
The pilgrim here to pause.

In seeds of laurel in the earth

The blossom of your fame is blown,
And somewhere, waiting for its birth,
The shaft is in the stone!

Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years

Which keep in trust your storied tombs,
Behold! your sisters bring their tears,
And these memorial blooms.

Small tributes! but your shades will smile
More proudly on these wreaths to-day,
Than when some cannon-moulded pile
Shall overlook this bay.

Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!
There is no holier spot of ground
Than where defeated valor lies,
By mourning beauty crowned!

Henry Timrod [1829-1867]

SENTINEL SONGS

WHEN falls the soldier brave,
Dead at the feet of wrong,

The poet sings and guards his grave
With sentinels of song.

Songs, march! he gives command,
Keep faithful watch and true;
The living and dead of the Conquered Land
Have now no guards save you.

Gray Ballads! mark ye well!

Thrice holy is your trust!

Go! halt by the fields where warriors fell;

Rest arms! and guard their dust.

List! Songs! your watch is long,

The soldiers' guard was brief;

Whilst right is right, and wrong is wrong,
Ye may not seek relief.

Go! wearing the gray of grief!

Go! watch o'er the Dead in Gray!

Go! guard the private and guard the chief, And sentinel their clay!

And the songs, in stately rhyme,
And with softly-sounding tread,

Go forth, to watch for a time—a time-
Where sleep the Deathless Dead.

And the songs, like funeral dirge,

In music soft and low,

Sing round the graves, whilst hot tears surge

From hearts that are homes of woe.

What though no sculptured shaft

Immortalize each brave?

What though no monument epitaphed
Be built above each grave?

When marble wears away,

And monuments are dust,

The songs that guard our soldiers' clay
Will still fulfil their trust.

With lifted head, and steady tread,
Like stars that guard the skies,

Go watch each bed, where rest the dead,
Brave Songs, with sleepless eyes.

Abram J. Ryan [1839-1888]

HEROES

THE winds that once the Argo bore
Have died by Neptune's ruined shrines,
And her hull is the drift of the deep-sea floor,
Though shaped of Pelion's tallest pines.
You may seek her crew on every isle
Fair in the foam of Ægean seas,

But, out of their rest, no charm can wile
Jason and Orpheus and Hercules.

And Priam's wail is heard no more
By windy Ilion's sea-built walls;
Nor great Achilles, stained with gore,
Shouts, "O ye gods, 'tis Hector falls!"
On Ida's mount is the shining snow,

But Jove has gone from its brow away;
And red on the plain the poppies grow
Where Greek and Trojan fought that day.

Mother Earth, are the heroes dead?

Do they thrill the soul of the years no more?
Are the gleaming snows and the poppies red
All that is left of the brave of yore?
Are there none to fight as Theseus fought,
Far in the young world's misty dawn?
Or to teach as gray-haired Nestor taught?
Mother Earth, are the heroes gone?

Gone? In a grander form they rise.

Dead? We may clasp their hands in ours, And catch the light of their clearer eyes,

And wreathe their brows with immortal flowers. Wherever a noble deed is done,

'Tis the pulse of a hero's heart is stirred;

Wherever Right has a triumph won,

There are the heroes' voices heard.

Their armor rings on a fairer field

Than Greek and Trojan fiercely trod;
For Freedom's sword is the blade they wield,
And the gleam above is the smile of God.
So, in his isle of calm delight,

Jason may sleep the years away;

For the heroes live, and the sky is bright,
And the world is a braver world to-day.

Edna Dean Proctor [1838

THE DAWN OF PEACE

YES-"on our brows we feel the breath

Of Dawn," though in the night we wait!
An arrow is in the heart of Death!

A God is at the doors of Fate!
The Spirit that moved upon the Deep
Is moving through the minds of men;
The nations feel it in their sleep.

A change has touched their dreams again.

Voices, confused and faint, arise,

Troubling their hearts from east and west.

A doubtful light is in their skies,

A gleam that will not let them rest! The dawn, the dawn is on the wing, The stir of change on every side, Unsignalled as the approach of spring, Invincible as the hawthorn tide.