128

THE CAPTAIN'S WIFE.

Oh, never yet a woman's heart was frozen so com

pletely!

So unbaptized with helping tears! so passionless and dumb!

Spellbound she stood, and motionless,

Madge spoke sweetly:

till little

"Dear mother, is the battle done? and will my father come?"

I laid my finger on her lips, and set the child to

playing.

Poor Blanche! the winter in her cheek was snowy like her name!

What could she do but kneel and pray, and linger at her praying?

O Christ! when other heroes die, moan other wives the same?

Must other women's hearts yet break, to keep the Cause from failing?

God pity our brave lovers then, who face the battle's blaze!

And pity wives in widowhood!

ing?

But is it unavail

O Lord! give Freedom first, then Peace!— and

unto Thee be praise!

OUR

THE DEFENDERS.

THE DEFENDERS.

BY THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.

129

UR flag on the land and our flag on the ocean,
An angel of peace wheresoever it goes;

Nobly sustained by Columbia's devotion,

The angel of death it shall be to our foes!
True to its native sky

Still shall our eagle fly,

Casting his sentinel glances afar;

Though bearing the olive branch,

Still in his talons stanch

Grasping the bolts of the thunders of war!

Hark to the sound! There's a foe on our border,

A foe striding on to the gulf of his doom; Freemen are rising and marching in order, Leaving the plough and the anvil and loom. Rust dims the harvest sheen

Of scythe and of sickle keen;

-

The axe sleeps in peace by the tree it would mar; Veteran and youth are out

Swelling the battle shout,

Grasping the bolts of the thunders of war!

Our brave mountain eagles swoop from their eyry, Our little panthers leap from forest and plain

130

THE DEFENDERS.

Out of the West flash the flames of the prairie, – Out of the East roll the waves of the main : Down from their northern shores,

Swift as Niagara pours,

They march, and their tread wakes the earth with its jar;

Under the Stripes and Stars,

Each with the soul of Mars, Grasping the bolts of the thunders of war!

Spite of the sword or assassin's stiletto,

While throbs a heart in the breast of the brave, The oak of the North or the Southern palmetto Shall shelter no foe except in the grave! While the gulf billow breaks

Echoing the northern lakes,

And ocean replies unto ocean afar,
Yield we no inch of land

While there's a patriot hand

Grasping the bolts of the thunders of war!

Rome, July 4, 1861.

CARTE DE VISITE.

131

'T

CARTE DE VISITE.

ANONYMOUS.

WAS a terrible fight," the soldier said!
"Our Colonel was one of the first to fall,
Shot dead on the field by a rifle ball, -
A braver heart than his never bled."

A

group for the painter's art were they:
The soldier with scarred and sunburnt face,
A fair-haired girl, full of youth and grace,
And her aged mother, wrinkled and gray.

These three in porch, where the sunlight came Through the tangled leaves of the jasmine-vine, Spilling itself like a golden wine,

And flecking the doorway with rings of flame.

The soldier had stopped to rest by the way,
For the air was sultry with summer-heat;
The road was like ashes under the feet,
And a weary distance before him lay.

"Yes, a terrible fight: our Ensign was shot As the order to charge was given the men,

132

CARTE DE VISITE.

When one from the ranks seized our colors, and

then

He, too, fell dead on the self-same spot.

"A handsome boy was this last his hair
Clustered in curls round his noble brow;
I can almost fancy I see him now,
With the scarlet stain on his face so fair."

"What was his name? have you never heard? Where was he from, this youth who fell ?

And your regiment, stranger, which was it? tell!” "Our regiment? It was the Twenty-third.”

The color fled from the young girl's cheek,
Leaving it as white as the face of the dead;
The mother lifted her eyes, and said:

66

Pity my daughter in mercy speak!

"I never knew aught of this gallant youth,"
The soldier answered; not even his name,
Or from what part of our State he came :
As God is above, I speak the truth!

"But when we buried our dead that night, I took from his breast this picture, see! It is as like him as like can be:

Hold it this way, toward the light."