God lives! He forged the iron will
That clutched and held that trembling hill.
God lives and reigns! He built and lent
The heights for Freedom's battlement
Where floats her flag in triumph still!
Fold up the banners! Smelt the guns!
Love rules. Her gentler purpose runs.
A mighty mother turns in tears
The pages of her battle years,
Lamenting all her fallen sons!
WILL HENRY THOMPSON.
* * * * *
LEE TO THE REAR.
[An incident in one of the battles in the Wilderness at the beginning
of the campaign of 1864.]
Dawn of a pleasant morning in May
Broke through the Wilderness cool and gray;
While perched in the tallest tree-tops, the birds
Were carolling Mendelssohn's "Songs without Words."
Far from the haunts of men remote,
The brook brawled on with a liquid note;
And Nature, all tranquil and lovely, wore
The smile of the spring, as in Eden of yore.
Little by little, as daylight increased,
And deepened the roseate flush in the East--
Little by little did morning reveal
Two long glittering lines of steel;
Where two hundred thousand bayonets gleam,
Tipped with the light of the earliest beam,
And the faces are sullen and grim to see
In the hostile armies of Grant and Lee.
All of a sudden, ere rose the sun,
Pealed on the silence the opening gun--
A little white puff of smoke there came,
And anon the valley was wreathed in flame.
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