A Library of Poetry and Song: Being Choice Selections from the Best Poets

The gray morn | As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep,
For their mother, - may Heaven defend her!

Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphurous smoke

Before the icy wind slow rolls away,

And the bright beams of frosty morning dance
Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood
Even to the forest's depth, and scattered arms,
And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments
Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful
path

Of the outsallying victors; far behind,
Black ashes note where their proud city stood.
Within yon forest is a gloomy glen,
Each tree which guards its darkness from the day
Waves o'er a warrior's tomb.

War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight,
The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade,
And to those royal murderers whose mean
thrones

Are bought by crimes of treachery and gore,
The bread they eat, the staff on which they lean.
Guards, garbed in blood-red livery, surround
Their palaces, participate the crimes

That force defends, and from a nation's rage
Secure the crown, which all the curses reach
That famine, frenzy, woe, and penury breathe.
These are the hired bravos who defend
The tyrant's throne.

The moon seems to shine just as brightly as then,
That night when the love yet unspoken
Leaped up to his lips, - when low, murmured vows
Were pledged to be ever unbroken;
Then drawing his sleeve roughly over his eyes,
He dashes off tears that are welling,
And gathers his gun closer up to its place,
As if to keep down the heart-swelling.

He passes the fountain, the blasted pine-tree,
The footstep is lagging and weary ;
Yet onward he goes, through the broad belt of light,
Toward the shades of the forest so dreary.
Hark! was it the night-wind that rustled the leaves?
Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing?
It looked like a rifle: "Ha! Mary, good by !"
And the life-blood is ebbing and plashing.

All quiet along the Potomac to-night,

No sound save the rush of the river; While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead, The picket 's off duty forever.

MRS. ETHEL LYNN BEERS.

CIVIL WAR.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

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There's only the sound of the lone sentry's tread As he tramps from the rock to the fountain, And he thinks of the two in the low trundle-bed, Far away in the cot on the mountain.

"RIFLEMAN, shoot me a fancy shot Straight at the heart of yon prowling vidette; Ring me a ball in the glittering spot

That shines on his breast like an amulet!"

"Ah, captain! here goes for a fine-drawn bead, There's music around when my barrel 's in

tune!"

Crack! went the rifle, the messenger sped,

And dead from his horse fell the ringing dragoon.

"Now, rifleman, steal through the bushes, and snatch

From your victim some trinket to handsel first blood;

A button, a loop, or that luminous patch
That gleams in the moon like a diamond stud!'

“O captain! I staggered, and sunk on my track,

When I gazed on the face of that fallen vidette, For he looked so like you, as he lay on his back,

That my heart rose upon me, and masters me yet.

"But I snatched off the trinket, this locket of gold;

An inch from the centre my lead broke its way,

His musket falls slack; his face, dark and grim, Scarce grazing the picture, so fair to behold,

Grows gentle with memories tender,

Of a beautiful lady in bridal array."

"Ha! rifleman, fling me the locket! - 't is she, | But that parting was years, long years ago,

We must bury him there, by the light of the The soldiers who buried the dead away

A SOLDIER of the Legion lay dying in Algiers,
There was lack of woman's nursing, there was

dearth of woman's tears;

But a comrade stood beside him, while his lifeblood ebbed away,

"Tell my brothers and companions, when they meet and crowd around,

To hear my mournful story, in the pleasant vineyard ground,

That we fought the battle bravely, and when the day was done,

Full many a corse lay ghastly pale beneath the setting sun;

And, mid the dead and dying, were some grown old in wars,

The death-wound on their gallant breasts, the last of many scars;

And some were young, and suddenly beheld life's morn decline,

And one had come from Bingen, — fair Bingen on the Rhine.

name

To listen to him kindly, without regret or shame, And bent, with pitying glances, to hear what he And to hang the old sword in its place (my famight say. ther's sword and mine) The dying soldier faltered, and he took that com- For the honor of old Bingen, dear Bingen on rade's hand,

And he said, "I nevermore shall see my own,

the Rhine.

"There's another,- not a sister; in the happy days gone by

You'd have known her by the merriment that sparkled in her eye;

Too innocent for coquetry, too fond for idle scorning,

Ampelopis, mock-grape. I have here literally trans-O lated the botanical name of the Virginia creeper, an appellation too cumbrous for verse.

friend! I fear the lightest heart makes some

times heaviest mourning!

Tell her the last night of my life (for, ere the moon | And upon platforms where the oak-trees grew,

Trumpets he set, huge beyond dreams of wonder,

Craftily purposed, when his arms withdrew,

To make him thought still housed there, like the thunder:

On the vine-clad hills of Bingen, -fair Bingen on And it so fell; for when the winds blew right,
the Rhine.
They woke their trumpets to their calls of might.
Unseen, but heard, their calls the trumpets blew,
Ringing the granite rocks, their only bearers,
Till the long fear into religion grew,

"I saw the blue Rhine sweep along, I heard, or seemed to hear,

The German songs we used to sing, in chorus sweet and clear;

And down the pleasant river, and up the slanting hill,

The echoing chorus sounded, through the evening calm and still;

And her glad blue eyes were on me, as we passed,

with friendly talk,

And nevermore those heights had human darers. Dreadful Doolkarnein was an earthly god ;

His walls but shadowed forth his mightier frowning;

Armies of giants at his bidding trod

From realm to realm, king after king discrowning.

Down many a path beloved of yore, and well-When thunder spoke, or when the earthquake

remembered walk!

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Yes, calmly on that dreadful scene her pale light seemed to shine,

As it shone on distant Bingen, - fair Bingen on

the Rhine.

CAROLINE E. NORTON.

THE TRUMPETS OF DOOLKARNEIN.

[In Eastern history are two Iskanders, or Alexanders, who are sometimes confounded, and both of whom are called Doolkar

Is he then dead?

Can great Doolkarnein die?!
Or can his endless hosts elsewhere be needed?
Were the great breaths that blew his minstrelsy
Phantoms, that faded as himself receded?
Or is he angered? Surely he still comes ;
This silence ushers the dread visitation;
Sudden will burst the torrent of his drums,
And then will follow bloody desolation.

nein, or the Two-Horned, in allusion to their subjugation of East So did fear dream; though now, with not a sound and West, horns being an Oriental symbol of power.

One of these heroes is Alexander of Macedon; the other a conqueror of more ancient times, who built the marvellous series of

ramparts on Mount Caucasus, known in fable as the wall of Gog

and Magog, that is to say, of the people of the North. It reache! from the Euxine Sea to the Caspian, where its flanks originated the subsequent appellation of the Caspian Gates.]

WITH awful walls, far glooming, that possessed
The passes 'twixt the snow-fed Caspian foun-
tains,

Doolkarnein, the dread lord of East and West,
Shut up the northern nations in their moun-

tains;

To scare good hope, summer had twice crept round.

And once, when in the woods an oak, for age, Fell dead, the silence with its groan appalling. At last they came where still, in dread array, As though they still might speak, the trumpets lay. Unhurt they lay, like caverns above ground,

The rifted rocks, for hands, about them clinging, Their tubes as straight, their mighty mouths as round

And firm as when the rocks were first set ringing.

Fresh from their unimaginable mould

They might have seemed, save that the storms had stained them

With a rich rust, that now, with gloomy gold In the bright sunshine, beauteously engrained them.

Breathless the gazers looked, nigh faint for awe, Then leaped, then laughed. What was it now they saw?

Myriads of birds. Myriads of birds, that filled The trumpets all with nests and nestling voices ! The great, huge, stormy music had been stilled By the soft needs that nursed those small, sweet noises!

O thou Doolkarnein, where is now thy wall? Where now thy voice divine and all thy forces? Great was thy cunning, but its wit was small Compared with nature's least and gentlest

courses.

Fears and false creeds may fright the realms awhile;

But heaven and earth abide their time, and smile.

LEIGH HUNT.

THE KNIGHT'S TOMB.

WHERE is the grave of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn?
Where may the grave of that good man be?—
By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn,
Under the twigs of a young birch-tree!
The oak that in summer was sweet to hear,
And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year,
And whistled and roared in the winter alone,
Is gone, and the birch in its stead is grown.

The knight's bones are dust,
And his good sword rust ;-
His soul is with the saints, I trust.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLeridge.

DIRGE FOR A SOLDIER. CLOSE his eyes; his work is done! What to him is friend or foeman,

Rise of moon or set of sun,

Hand of man or kiss of woman?

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