Must other women's hearts yet break, to keep the Cause from failing?

God pity our brave lovers, then, who face the battle's blaze!

And pity wives in widowhood!—But is it unavailing?

O Lord! give Freedom first, then Peace!-and unto Thee be praise !

THEODORE TILTON.

"OUR LEFT."

[Manassas, August 30, 1862.]

FROM dawn to dark they stood
That long midsummer day,
While fierce and fast
The battle blast

Swept rank on rank away.

From dawn to dark they fought,
With legions torn and cleft;
And still the wide

Black battle tide

Poured deadlier on "Our Left."

They closed each ghastly gap;

They dressed each shattered rank;

They knew-how well

That freedom fell
With that exhausted flank.

"Oh, for a thousand men

Like these that melt away!"

And down they came,
With steel and flame,
Four thousand to the fray!

Right through the blackest cloud
Their lightning path they cleft;
And triumph came
With deathless fame
To our unconquered

Left."

Ye of your sons secure,
Ye of your dead bereft—
Honor the brave

Who died to save
Your all upon "“Our Left.”

FRANCIS O. TICKNOR.

WANTED - A MAN.

[This poem so impressed President Lincoln, that he read it to his Cabinet at the crisis referred to, in 1862, when the great want of the North was a fit leader for its armies.]

BACK from the trebly crimsoned field
Terrible words are thunder-tost;
Full of the wrath that will not yield,
Full of revenge for battles lost!
Hark to their echo, as it crost
The Capital, making faces wan;
"End this murderous holocaust;
Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN !

"Give us a man of God's own mould,
Born to marshal his fellow-men;
One whose fame is not bought and sold
At the stroke of a politician's pen;
Give us the man of thousands ten,
Fit to do as well as to plan;

Give us a rallying-cry, and then,
Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!

"No leader to shirk the boasting foe,

And to march and countermarch our brave, Till they fall like ghosts in the marshes low, And swamp-grass covers each nameless grave; Nor another, whose fatal banners wave

Aye in Disaster's shameful van;

Nor another, to bluster, and lie, and rave,— Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!

"Hearts are mourning in the North,
While the sister rivers seek the main,
Red with our life-blood flowing forth-
Who shall gather it up again?
Though we march to the battle-plain
Firmly as when the strife began,

Shall all our offering be in vain ?-
Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!

"6 Is there never one in all the land,
One on whose might the Cause may lean?
Are all the common ones so grand,
And all the titled ones so mean?

What if your failure may have been

In trying to make good bread from bran,
From worthless metal a weapon keen ?—
Abraham Lincoln, find us a MAN!

"O, we will follow him to the death,

Where the foeman's fiercest columns are!

O, we will use our latest breath,

Cheering for every sacred star!
His to marshal us high and far;

Ours to battle, as patriots can

When a Hero leads the Holy War!

Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!"

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.

BEYOND THE POTOMAC.

[Lee's first invasion of Maryland, September, 1862.] THEY slept on the fields which their valor had won, But arose with the first early blush of the sun, For they knew that a great deed remained to be done, When they passed o'er the river.

They rose with the sun, and caught life from his light

Those giants of courage, those Anaks in fightAnd they laughed out aloud in the joy of their might, Marching swift for the river.

On! on! like the rushing of storms thro' the hillsOn! on! with a tramp that is firm as their wills— And the one heart of thousands grows buoyant, and thrills,

At the thought of the river!

Oh, the sheen of their swords! the fierce gleam of their eyes!

It seemed as on earth a new sunlight would rise, And king-like flash up to the sun in the skies,

O'er the path to the river.

But their banners, shot-scarred, and all darkened

with gore,

On a strong wind of morning streamed wildly before,

Like the wings of death-angels swept fast to the shore,

The green shore of the river!

As they march from the hillside, the hamlet, the

stream,

Gaunt throngs whom the foeman had manacled, teem,

Like men just aroused from some terrible dream,

To pass over the river.

They behold the broad banners, blood-darkened, yet fair,

And a moment dissolves the last spell of despair, While a peal as of victory swells on the air,

Rolling out to the river.

And that cry, with a thousand strange echoings spread,

Till the ashes of heroes seemed stirred in their bed, And the deep voice of passion surged up from the dead

Aye! press on to the river!

On! on! like the rushing of storms through the hills,

On! on! with a tramp that is firm as their wills, And the one heart of thousands grows buoyant, and thrills,

As they pause by the river.

Then the wan face of Maryland, haggard and worn, At that sight lost the touch of its aspect forlorn, And she turned on the foeman full statured in scorn,

Pointing stern to the river.

And Potomac flowed calm, scarcely heaving her breast,

With her low-lying billows all bright in the west, For a charm as from God lulled the waters to rest Of the fair rolling river.

Passed! passed! the glad thousands march safe through the tide.

(Hark, despot! and hear the dread knell of your pride,

Ringing weird-like and wild, pealing up from the side Of the calm flowing river!)