HO! SONS OF THE PURITAN.

Cursed in its coffers, and cursed in its fame!

277

And woe to the traitors, feigning friendship, and meeting

Your trust with assassins' dark weapons of shame! As did Penuel's high

Parapets lowly lie,

And the princes of Succoth die,

So fare these the same!

Though sharp be the throes of these last tribulations,
Look ye! a brighter dawn kindles the day!
O, children of Saints, and the hope of the Nation,
Look aloft! your deliverance cometh for aye!
Soon, from those fairer skies,
White-winged, the herald flies
To the warders of Paradise,
To call them away!

Then on to the battle-shock! and if in anguish, Gasping, and feeble-pulsed, low on the field, Struck down by the traitor's fell prowess ye languish,

In Jehovah behold ye your Refuge and Shield! Or, if in victory,

Doubts shall come thick to ye,

Trust in Him

He shall speak to ye

The mystery revealed.

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A PLAINT FROM SAVAGE'S.

Ho! sons of the Puritan! sons of the Roundhead

Leave your fields fallow, your ships at the shore !

The foe is advancing

the trumpet hath sounded,

And the jaws of their Moloch are dripping with gore!

Raise the old pennon's staff!

Let the fierce cannon's laugh,

Till the votaries of Ammon's calf
Blaspheme ye no more!

A PLAINT FROM SAVAGE'S.

BY GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND.

I.

ALAS! for the pleasant peace we knew
In the happy summers of long ago,

When the rivers were bright and the skies were

blue

By the homes of Henrico.

We dreamed of wars that were far away,

And read, as in fable, of blood that ran Where the James and Chickahominy stray, Through the groves of Powhattan.

A PLAINT FROM SAVAGE'S.

II.

'Tis a dream come true, for the afternoons
Blow bugles of war by our fields of grain,
And the sabres sink as the dark dragoons
Come galloping up the lane;

279

The pigeons have flown from the eaves and tiles,
The oat-blades have grown to blades of steel,
And the Huns swarm down the leafy aisles
Of the grand old Commonweal.

III.

They have torn the Indian fisher's nets
Where the gray Pamunkey goes toward the sea,
And blood runs red in the rivulets

That babbled and brawled in glee;

The corpses are strewn in Fairy Oak glades, The hoarse guns thunder from Drury's Ridge, The fishes that played in the cool deep shades Are frightened from Bottom Bridge.

IV.

I would that the year were blotted away,

And the strawberries green in the hedge again;

That the scythe might swing in the tangled hay, And the squirrels romp in the glen;

The walnuts sprinkle the clover slopes

Where graze the sheep and the spotted steer,

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THE VARUNA.

And the winter restore the golden hopes
That were trampled in a year.

Michie's Farm, Savage's Station, Va.

THE VARUNA.

SUNK APRIL TWENTY-FIFTH, 1862.

BY GEORGE H. BOKER.

WHO has not heard of the dauntless Varuna?

Who has not heard of the deeds she has

done?

Who shall not hear, while the brown Mississippi
Rushes along from the snow to the sun ?

Crippled and leaking she entered the battle,

Sinking and burning she fought through the fray, Crushed were her sides and the waves ran across

her,

Ere, like a death-wounded lion at bay, Sternly she closed in the last fatal grapple, Then in her triumph moved grandly away.

Five of the rebels, like satellites, round her,
Burned in her orbit of splendor and fear:
One, like the pleiad of mystical story,

Shot, terror-stricken, beyond her dread sphere.

THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862. 281

We who are waiting with crowns for the victors, Though we should offer the wealth of our store, Load the Varuna from deck down to kelson,

Still would be niggard, such tribute to pour On courage so boundless. It beggars possession, It knocks for just payment at heaven's bright door!

Cherish the heroes who fought the Varuna;
Treat them as kings if they honor your way;
Succor and comfort the sick and the wounded;
Oh! for the dead, let us all kneel to pray.

THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862.

BY JOHN G. WHITTIER.

THE flags of war like storm-birds fly,
The charging trumpets blow;

Yet rolls no thunder in the sky,
No earthquake strives below.

And calm and patient nature keeps

Her ancient promise well,

Though o'er her bloom and greenness sweeps
The battle's breath of hell.