IDEALS.

To ears that await its token
Indeterminate, fitful, broken,
Perpetually it strays,

By the discords of our days.
It pierces the grim disasters

Öf clamorous human Hate, And its influence overmasters All the ironies of Fate.

The icy laugh of the scorner

Cannot strike its echoes mute;
It cleaves the moan of the mourner
Like a clear æolian lute;

At its tone less clear and savage
Grows the anguish of farewell tears,
And its melody haunts the ravage
Of the desecrating years.

Philosophy builds, and spares not
Her firm, laborious power,
But her lordly edifice wears not
Its last aerial tower.

For the quarries of Reason fail her
Ere the structure's perfect scope,
And the stone that would now avail
her
[hope.
Must be hewn from heights of

But Art, at her noblest glory,

Can seem, to her lovers fond,

As divinely admonitory

Of infinitudes beyond.

WOUNDS.

THE night-wind sweeps its viewless lyre,

And o'er dim lands, at pastoral rest,
A single star's white heart of fire
Is throbbing in the amber west.

I track a rivulet, while I roam,
By banks that copious leafage cools,
And watch it roughening into foam,
Or deepening into glassy pools.

And where the shy stream gains a glade

That willowy thickets overwhelm, I find a cottage in the shade

Of one high patriarchal elm.

Unseen, I mark, well bowered from reach,

A group the sloping lawn displays, And more by gestures than by speech I learn their converse while I gaze. In curious band, youth, maid, and dame,

About his chair they throng to greet

A gaunt old man of crippled frame, Whose crutch leans idle at his feet.

Girt with meek twilight's peaceful breath, [fray, They hear of loud, tempestuous Of troops mown down like wheat by death,

Of red Antietam's ghastly day. He tells of hurts that will not heal;

Of aches that nerve and sinew fret, Where sting of shot and bite of steel Have left their dull mementos yet;

And touched by pathos, filled with praise,

His gathered hearers closer press, To pay alike in glance or phrase, Response of pitying tenderness.

But I, who note their kindly will, Look onward, past the box-edged walk, [still, Where stands a woman, grave and Oblivious of their fleeting talk.

Her listless arms droop either side;

In pensive grace her brow is bent; Her slender form leaves half-descried A sweet fatigued abandonment.

And while she lures my musing eye, The mournful reverie of her air Speaks to my thought, I know not why,

In the stern dialect of despair.

Lone wistful moods it seems to show Of anguish borne through laggard years,

With outward calm, with secret flow Of unalleviating tears.

It breathes of duty's daily strife, When jaded effort loathes to strive; Of patience lingering firm, when life Is tired of being yet alive.

Enthralled by this fair, piteous face, While heaven is purpling overhead, No more I heed the old soldier trace How sword has cut, or bullet sped.

I dream of sorrow's noiseless fight, Where no blades ring, no cannon roll,

And where the shadowy blows that smite

Give bloodless wounds that scar the soul;

Of fate unmoved by desperate prayers From those its plunderous wrath lays low;

Of bivouacs where the spirit stares At smouldering passion's faded glow;

And last, of that sad armistice made On the dark field whence hope has fled,