Up the street came the rebel tread,
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.
Under his slouched hat left and right
He glanced; the old flag met his sight.
"Halt!" the dust-brown ranks stood fast:
"Fire"-out blazed the rifle blast.
It shivered the window pane and sash,
It rent the banner with seam and gash.
Quick, as it fell from the broken sash,
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf;
She leaned far out on the window sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.
All day long through Frederick street
Sounded the tread of marching feet;
All day long that free flag tost
Over the heads of the serried host.
Ever its torn folds rose and fell
On the loyal winds that loved it well.
And through the hill-gaps sunset light
Shone over it with a warm good-night.
Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er,
And the soldier rides on his raids no more.
Honor to her, and let a tear
Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier.
Over Barbara Frietchie's grave,
Flag of Freedom and Union, wave.
Peace and order and beauty draw
Round thy symbol of light and law;
And ever the stars above look down
On thy stars below in Frederick town.
-John Greenleaf Whittier.
A land of settled government,
A land of just and old renown, Where freedom broadens slowly down, From precedent to precedent:
Where faction seldom gathers head;
But, by degrees to fullness wrought, The strength of some diffusive thought Hath time and space to work and spread. Should banded unions persecute Opinion, and induce a time
When single thought is civil crime,
And individual freedom mute;
Though power should make, from land to land,
The name of Britain trebly great-
Though every channel of the State
Should almost choke with golden sand-
Yet waft me from the harbor mouth,
Wild wind! I seek a warmer sky,
And I will see, before I die,
The palms and temples of the South.
-Alfred Tennyson.
E sons of freedom, wake to glory!
Hark! hark! what myriads bid you rise!
Your children, wives, and grandsires hoary,
Behold their tears, and hear their cries!
Shall hateful tyrants, mischief breeding,
With hireling hosts, a ruffian band,
Affright and desolate the land,
While peace and liberty lie bleeding?
To arms! to arms! ye brave!
Th' avenging sword unsheath;
March on! march on! all hearts resolved
On victory or death.
Now, now the dangerous storm is rolling,
Which treacherous kings confederate raise:
The dogs of war, let loose, are howling,
And lo! our fields and cities blaze;
And shall we basely view the ruin,
While lawless force, with guilty stride,
Spreads desolation far and wide,
With crimes and blood his hands imbruing.
To arms! to arms! ye brave, etc.
O Liberty! can man resign thee,
Once having felt thy generous flame?
Can dungeons, bolts, or bars confine thee!
Or whips thy noble spirit tame?
Too long the world has wept, bewailing
That falsehood's dagger tyrants wield,
But freedom is our sword and shield,
And all their arts are unavailing.
To arms! to arms! ye brave, etc.
-Rouget de Lisle.
The Private of the Buffs; or, The British Soldier in China.
["Some Seiks, and a private of the Buffs, having remained behind with the grog-carts, fell into the hands of the Chinese. On the next day they were brought before the authorities and ordered to perform Kotou. The Seiks obeyed, but Moyse, the English soldier, declared he would not prostrate himself before any Chinaman alive, and was immediately knocked upon the head and his body thrown upon a dunghill."-China Correspondent of the London Times.]
AST night, among his fellow roughs,
He jested, quaffed, and swore;
A drunken private of the Buffs,
Who never looked before.
To-day, beneath the foeman's frown,
He stands in Elgin's place,
Ambassador from Britain's crown,
And type of all her race.
Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught, Bewildered, and alone,
A heart with English instinct fraught,
He yet can call his own.
Ay, tear his body limb from limb,
Bring cord or ax or flame,
He only knows that not through him
Shall England come to shame.
As by the Shore at Break of Day.
S by the shore, at break of day,
A vanquished chief expiring lay,
Upon the sands, with broken sword,
He traced his farewell to the free;
And there the last unfinished word
He dying wrote was "Liberty!"
At night a sea-bird shrieked the knell
Of him who thus for freedom fell;
The words he wrote, ere evening came,
Were covered by the sounding sea;
So pass away the cause and name
Of him who dies for liberty!
AUGHTER of God! that sits on high
D'Amid the dances of the sky,
DAUGH
And guidest with thy gentle sway
The planets on their tuneful way;
Sweet Peace! shall ne'er again
The smile of thy most holy face,
From thine ethereal dwelling-place,
Rejoice the wretched, weary race
Of discord-breathing men?
Too long, O gladness-giving Queen!
Thy tarrying in heaven has been;
Too long o'er this fair blooming world
The flag of blood has been unfurled,
Polluting God's pure day;
Whilst, as each maddening people reels,
War onward drives his scythed wheels,
And at his horses' bloody heels
Shriek Murder and Dismay.
Oft have I wept to hear the cry
Of widow wailing bitterly;
To see the parent's silent tear
For children fallen beneath the spear:
And I have felt so sore
The sense of human guilt and woe,
That I, in Virtue's passioned glow,
Have cursed (my soul was wounded so)
The shape of man I bore!
Then come from thy serene abode,
Thou gladness-giving child of God!
And cease the world's ensanguined strife,
And reconcile my soul to life;
For much I long to see,
Ere I shall to the grave descend,
Thy hand its blessed branch extend,
And to the world's remotest end
Wave Love and Harmony!
-William Tennant.
AH! whence yon glare heaven?—that dark red smoke
Blotting the silver moon? The stars are quenched
In darkness, and pure and spangling snow
Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round!
Hark to that roar, whose swift and deafening peals
In countless echoes through the mountains ring,
Startling pale midnight on her starry throne!
Now swells the intermingling din; the jar
Frequent and frightful of the bursting bomb;
The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout,
The ceaseless clangor, and the rush of men
Inebriate with rage-loud, and more loud
The discord grows; till pale death shuts the scene,
And o'er the conqueror and the conquered draws
His cold and bloody shroud. Of all the men
Whom day's departing beam saw blooming there,
In proud and vigorous health; of all the hearts
That beat with anxious life at sunset there,
How few survive, how few are beating now!
All is deep silence, like the fearful calm
That slumbers in the storm's portentous pause;
Save when the frantic wail of widowed love
Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan
With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay
Wrapt round its struggling powers.
The gray morn
Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphurous smoke
Before the icy wind slow rolls away,
And the bright beams of frosty morning dance
Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood
Even to the forest's depth, and scattered arms,
And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments
Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful path
Of the outsallying victors; far behind,
Black ashes note where their proud city stood.
Within yon forest is a gloomy glen-
Each tree which guards its darkness from the day
Waves o'er a warrior's tomb.
War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight,
The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade,
And to those royal murderers whose mean thrones
Are bought by crimes of treachery and gore,
The bread they eat, the staff on which they lean.
Guards, garbed in blood-red livery, surround
Their palaces, participate the crimes
That force defends, and from a nation's rage
Secure the crown, which all the curses reach
That famine, frenzy, woe and penury breathe.
These are the hired bravos who defend
Beautiful over my pathway
The forest spoils are shed; They are spotting the grassy hillocks With purple and gold and red.
Beautiful is the death-sleep
Of those who bravely fight
In their country's holy quarrel,
And perish for the Right.
But who shall comfort the living,
The light of whose homes is gone :
The bride that, early widowed,
Lives broken-hearted on;
The matron whose sons are lying
In graves on a distant shore;
The maiden, whose promised husband
Comes back from the war no more?
I look on the peaceful dwellings Whose windows glimmer in sight, With croft and garden and orchard That bask in the mellow light;
And I know that, when our couriers
With news of victory come,
They will bring a bitter message
Of hopeless grief to some.
Again I turn to the woodlands,
And I shudder as I see
The mock-grape's blood-red banner
Hung out on the cedar tree;
And I think of days of slaughter,
And the night sky red with flames, On the Chattahoochee's meadows, And the wasted banks of the James.
O for the fresh spring season,
When the groves are in their prime, And far away in the future
Is the frosty autumn time!
O for that better season,
When the pride of the foe shall yield,
And the hosts of God and Freedom
March back from the well-won field;
And the matron shall clasp her first-born
With tears of joy and pride;
And the scarred and war-worn lover
Shall claim his promised bride;
The leaves are swept from the branches;
But the living buds are there,
With folded flower and foliage,
To sprout in a kinder air.
-William Cullen Bryant.
* Ampelopsis, mock-grape; the botanical name of the Virginia creeper.
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