Lies in thy soil and makes it part of ours:
Across more recent graves,

Where unresentful Nature waves

Her pennons o'er the shot-ploughed sod,
Proclaiming the sweet Truce of God,

We from this consecrated plain stretch out
Our hands as free from afterthought or doubt
As here the united North

Poured her embrowned manhood forth

In welcome of our savior and thy son.
Through battle we have better learned thy worth,
The long-breathed valor and undaunted will,
Which, like his own, the day's disaster done,
Could, safe in manhood, suffer and be still.
Both thine and ours the victory hardly won;
If ever with distempered voice or pen

We have misdeemed thee, here we take it back,
And for the dead of both don common black.
Be to us evermore as thou wast then,

As we forget thou hast not always been,
Mother of States and unpolluted men,

Virginia, fitly named from England's manly queen!

James Russell Lowell.

SOUTH CAROLINA.

OUTSIDE my exile's home I watch the sway

Of the bowed pine-tops in the gloaming gray,

Casting across the melancholy lea

A tint of browner blight;

Outside my exile's home, borne to and fro,

I hear the inarticulate murmurs flow
Of the faint wind-tides breathing like a sea;
When, in clear vision, softly dawns on me
(As if in contrast with yon slow decay)
The loveliest land that smiles beneath the sky,
The coast-land of our Western Italy:

I view the waters quivering; quaff the breeze,
Whose briny raciness keeps an under taste
Of flavorous tropic sweets (perchance swept home
Across the flickering waste

Of summer waves, capped by the Ariel foam) From Cuba's perfumed groves and garden spiceries!

Along the horizon-line a vapor swims,

Pale rose and amethyst, melting into gold;
Up to our feet the fawning ripples rolled,
Glimmer an instant, tremble, lapse, and — die :
The whole rare scene, its every element
Etherealized, transmuted, subtly blent
By viewless alchemy,

Into the glory of a golden mood,
Brings potent exaltations, while I walk
(A joyful youth again)

The snow-white beaches by the Atlantic Main!

Paul Hamilton Hayne.

GEORGIA.

1.

THE VOICE IN THE PINES.

HE morn is softly beautiful and still,

THE

Its light fair clouds in pencilled gold and gray Pause motionless above the pine-grown hill, Where the pines, tranced as by a wizard's will, Uprise, as mute and motionless as they!

Yea! mute and moveless; not one flickering spray Flashed into sunlight, nor a gaunt bough stirred; Yet, if wooed hence beneath those pines to stray, We catch a faint, thin murmur far away,

A bodiless voice, by grosser ears unheard.

What voice is this? what low and solemn tone, Which, though all wings of all the winds seem furled,

Nor even the zephyr's fairy flute is blown,
Makes thus forever its mysterious moan

From out the whispering pine-tops' shadowy world ?

Ah! can it be the antique tales are true?

Doth some lone Dryad haunt the breezeless air,
Fronting yon bright illimitable blue,

And wildly breathing all her wild soul through
That strange, unearthly music of despair?

Or can it be that ages since, storm-tossed,
And driven far inland from the roaring lea,

Some baffled ocean-spirit, worn and lost,

Here, through dry summer's dearth and winter's frost, Yearns for the sharp, sweet kisses of the sea?

Whate'er the spell, I hearken and am dumb, Dream-touched, and musing in the tranquil morn; the pheasant's gusty drum,

All woodland sounds,

The mock-bird's fugue, the droning insect's hum, Scarce heard for that strange, sorrowful voice forlorn!

Beneath the drowséd sense, from deep to deep

Of spiritual life its mournful minor flows, Stream-like, with pensive tide, whose currents keep Low-murmuring 'twixt the bounds of grief and sleep, Yet looked for aye from sleep's divine repose.

II.

ASPECTS OF THE PINES.

TALL, sombre, grim, against the morning sky.
They rise, scarce touched by melancholy airs
Which stir the fadeless foliage dreamfully,
As if from realms of mystical despairs.

Tall, sombre, grim, they stand with dusky gleams
Brightening to gold within the woodland's core,
Beneath the gracious noontide's tranquil beams,
But the weird winds of morning sigh no more.

A stillness, strange, divine, ineffable,

Broods round and o'er them in the wind's surcease,

And on each tinted copse and shimmering dell
Rests the mute rapture of deep-hearted peace.

Last, sunset comes, the solemn joy and might

Borne from the west when cloudless day declines, Low, flute-like breezes sweep the waves of light, And lifting dark green tresses of the pines,

Till every lock is luminous, — gently float,

Fraught with hale odors up the heavens afar To faint when Twilight on her virginal throat Wears for a gem the tremulous vesper star.

O GRACIOUS breath of sunrise! divine air!
That brood'st serenely o'er the purpling hills;
O blissful valleys! nestling, cool and fair,

In the fond arms of yonder murmurous rills,
Breathing their grateful measures to the sun;
O dew-besprinkled paths, that circling run
Through sylvan shades and solemn silences,
Once more ye bring my fevered spirit peace!

The fitful breezes, fraught with forest balm,
Faint, in rare wafts of perfume, on my brow;
The woven lights and shadows, rife with calm,
Creep slantwise 'twixt the foliage, bough on bough
Uplifted heavenward, like a verdant cloud
Whose rain is music, soft as love, or loud