The rosy edges of their smile lay bare,
What words divine of lover or of poet
Could tell our love and make thee know it,
Among the Nations bright beyond compare?
What were our lives without thee?

What all our lives to save thee?
We reck not what we gave thee;
We will not dare to doubt thee,

But ask whatever else, and we will dare!

JAMES RUSSELL Lowell.

HEROES OF THE SOUTH.

[From an Ode on the Valor and Sufferings of Confederate Soldiers.]

FOUR deadly years we fought, Ringed by a girdle of unfaltering fire

That coiled and hissed in lessening circles nigher.
Blood dyed the Southern wave;

From ocean border to calm inland river,
There was no pause, no peace, no respite ever.
Blood of our bravest brave

Drenched in a scarlet rain the western lea,
Swelled the hoarse waters of the Tennessee,
Incarnadined the gulfs, the lakes, the rills,
And from a hundred hills

Steamed in a mist of slaughter to the skies,
Shutting all hope of heaven from mortal eyes.
The Beaufort blooms were wither'd on the stem;
The fair Gulf City in a single night

Lost her imperial diadem;

And wheresoe'er men's troubled vision roamed They viewed MIGHT towering o'er the humbled crest of RIGHT!

But for a time, but for a time, O God! The innate forces of our knightly blood Rallied, and by the mount, the fen, the flood, Upraised the tottering standards of our race. O grand Virginia! though thy glittering glaive Lies sullied, shattered in a ruthless grave, How it flashed once!

They dug their trenches deep

(The implacable foe), they ranged their lines of wrath ;

But watchful ever on the imminent path
Thy steel-clad genius stood;

North, South, East, West,-they strove to pierce thy shield:

Thou wouldst not yield!
Until-unconquered, yea, unconquered still—
Nature's weakened forces answered not thy will,
And gored with wound on wound,

Thy fainting limbs and forehead sought the ground;
And with thee, the young nation fell, a pall
Solemn and rayless, covering one and all!

God's ways are marvellous; here we stand to-day
Discrown'd, and shorn in wildest disarray,
The mock of earth! yet never shone the sun
On sterner deeds, or nobler victories won.
Not in the field alone; ah, come with me
To the dim bivouac by the winter's sea;
Mark the fair sons of courtly mothers crouch

O'er flickering fires; but gallant still, and gay
As on some bright parade. Or mark the couch
In reeking hospitals, whereon is laid
The latest scion of a line perchance
Whose veins were royal.

romance,

Close your blurred

Blurred by the dropping of a maudlin tear,

And watch the manhood here ;

That firm but delicate countenance,

Distorted sometimes by an awful pang,

Borne in meek patience. When the trumpets rang
"To horse!" but yester-morn, that ardent boy
Sprung to his charger, thrilled with hope and joy
To the very finger-tips; and now he lies,
The shadows deepening in those falcon eyes,
But calm and undismayed

As if the Death that chills him, brow and breast, Were some fond bride who whispered, "Let us rest!"

Enough! 'tis over! the last gleam of hope
Hath melted from our mournful horoscope—
Of all, of all bereft ;
Only to us are left

Our buried heroes and their matchless deeds.
These cannot pass; they hold the vital seeds
Which in some far, untracked, unvisioned hour
May burst to vivid bud and glorious flower.

Meanwhile, upon the nation's broken heart
Her martyrs sleep. Oh, dearer far to her
Than if each son, a wreathéd conqueror,
Rode in triumphant state

The loftiest crest of fate;

Oh, dearer far, because outcast and low,
She yearns above them in her awful woe.

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE.

HYMN FOR MEMORIAL-DAY.

[Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S. C.]
SLEEP sweetly in your humble graves-
Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause!
Though yet no marble column craves
The pilgrim here to pause,

In seeds of laurel in the earth

The blossom of your fame is blown,

And somewhere, waiting for its birth,
The shaft is in the stone!

Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years

Which keep in trust your storied tombs,
Behold! your sisters bring their tears
And these memorial blooms.

Small tributes! but your shades will smile
More proudly on these wreaths to-day
Than when some cannon-moulded pile
Shall overlook this bay.

Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!
There is no holier spot of ground
Than where defeated valor lies

By mourning beauty crowned.

HENRY TIMROD,

ODE FOR DECORATION-DAY.

BRING flowers to strew again

With fragrant purple rain

Of lilacs, and of roses white and red,

The dwellings of our dead, our glorious dead!
Let the bells ring a solemn funeral chime,

And wild war-music bring anew the time
When they who sleep beneath
Were full of vigorous breath,

And in their lusty manhood sallied forth,

Holding in strong right hand

The fortunes of the land,

The pride and power and safety of the North!

It seems but yesterday

The long and proud array

But yesterday when even the solid rock

Shook as with earthquake shock,—

As North and South, like two huge icebergs, ground

Against each other with convulsive bound,

And the whole world stood still

To view the mighty war,

And hear the thundrous roar,

While sheeted lightnings wrapped each plain and hill.

Alas! how few came back

From battle and from wrack!

Alas! how many lie

Beneath a Southern sky,

Who never heard the fearful fight was done,

And all they fought for won.

Sweeter, I think, their sleep,

More peaceful and more deep,

Could they but know their wounds were not in vain,
Could they but hear the grand triumphal strain,
And see their homes unmarred by hostile tread.
Ah! let us trust it is so with our dead-
That they the thrilling joy of triumph feel,
And in that joy disdain the foeman's steel.

We mourn for all, but each doth think of one
More precious to the heart than aught beside-
Some father, brother, husband, or some son

Who came not back, or coming, sank and died: In him the whole sad list is glorified! "He fell 'fore Richmond, in the seven long days When battle raged from morn till blood-dewed eve, And lies there," one pale widowed mourner says, And knows not most to triumph or to grieve. "My boy fell at Fair Oaks," another sighs; "And mine at Gettysburg!" his neighbor cries, And that great name each sad-eyed listener thrills.

I think of one who vanished when the press

Of battle surged along the Wilderness,

And mourned the North upon her thousand hills.

O gallant brothers of the generous South,
Foes for a day and brothers for all time!