THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD.

T. O'HARA.

T

HE muffled drum's sad roll has beat
The soldier's last tattoo;

No more on life's parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few.

On Fame's eternal camping ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And glory guards, with solemn round,
The bivouac of the dead.

No rumor of the foe's advance

Now swells upon the wind;

No troubled thought at midnight haunts.

Of loved ones left behind;

No vision of the morrow's strife

The warrior's dream alarms,

No braying horn or screaming fife
At the dawn shall call to arms.

Their shivered swords are red with rust,
Their plumed heads are bowed,

Their haughty banner trailed in dust,
Is now their martial shroud-

And plenteous funeral tears have washed The red stains from each brow,

And the proud forms, by battle gashed, Are free from anguish now.

The neighing troop, the flashing blade,
The bugle's stirring blast,

The charge, the fearful cannonade,
The din and shout are past—
Nor war's wild note, nor glory's peal,
Shall thrill with fierce delight
Those breasts that never more may feel
The rapture of the fight.

Like the fierce northern hurricane
That sweeps its great plateau,
Flushed with the triumph yet to gain,
Came down the serried foe-
Who heard the thunder of the fray
Break o'er the field beneath,

Knew well the watchword of that day
Was victory or death.

Full many a mother's breath has swept
O'er Angostura's plain,

And long the pitying sky has wept

Above its moldered slain.

The raven's scream or eagle's flight,
Or shepherd's pensive lay,

Alone now wake each solemn height
That frowned o'er that dread fray.

Sons of the dark and bloody ground;
Ye must not slumber there,

THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD.

Where stranger steps and tongues resound

Along the heedless air;

Your own proud land's heroic soil

Shall be your fitter grave;

She claims from war her richest spoil

The ashes of her brave.

Thus 'neath their parent turf they rest,
Far from the gory field,

Borne to a Spartan mother's breast
On many a bloody shield.

The sunshine of their native sky
Smiles sadly on them here,

And kindred eyes and hearts watch by
The heroes' sepulchre.

Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead!
Dear as the blood ye gave,
No impious footstep here shall tread
The herbage of your grave.

Nor shall your glory be forgot
While Fame her record keeps,
Or Honor points the hallowed spot
Where Valor proudly sleeps.

Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone

In deathless song shall tell,

When many a vanished year

The story how ye fell;

hath flown

Nor wreck, nor change, nor Winter's blight

Nor Time's remorseless doom,

Can dim one ray of holy light

That gilds your glorious tomb.

191

HE world is full of glorious likenesses.
The poet's power is to sort these out,

And to make music with the common strings
With which the world is strung; to make the
dumb

Earth utter heavenly harmony, and draw

Life clear and sweet and harmless as spring

water

Welling its way thro' flowers.

The poet's pen is the true divining rod

Which trembles toward the inner founts of feeling;
Bringing to light and use else hid from all,
The many sweet, clear sources which we have
Of good and beauty in our own deep bosoms,
And mocks the variations of all mind

As does the needle an air-investing storm's.

Experience and imagination are

Mother and sire of song-the harp and hand.
The bard's aim is to give us thoughts, his art
Lieth in giving them as bright as may be.

THE TRUE POET.

And even when their looks are earthly, still
If opened, like geodes, they may be found

Full of sparkling, sparry loveliness.

193

They should be wrought, not cast; like tempered stel,
Burned and cooled, burned again, and cooled again.
A thought is like a ray of light--complex

In nature simple only in effect.

Words are the motes of thought, and nothing more;
Words are like sea-shells on the shore; they show
Where the mind ends, and not how far it has been.
Let every thought, too, soldier-like, be stripped
And roughly looked over.

A mist of words,

Like halos round the moon, though they enlarge
The seeming size of thoughts, make the light less
Doubly. It is the thought writ down we want,
Not its effect-not likenesses of likenesses.
And such descriptions are not, more than gloves
Instead of hands to shake, enough for us.

Great bards toil much and most, but most at first
Ere they can learn to concentrate the soul
For hours upon a thought to carry it.

*

Some never rise above a petty fault,

And of whose best things it is kindly said,
The thought is fair; but to be perfect wants
A little hightening, like a pretty face

With a low forehead.

Some steal a thought

And clip it round the edge, and challenge him

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