Then the old-fashioned colonel

Galloped through the white infernal
Powder cloud,

And his broad sword was swinging,
And his brazen throat was ringing
Trumpet loud!

And the blue

Bullets flew,

And the trooper jackets redden
At the touch of the leaden
Rifle's breath!

And rounder, rounder, rounder,
Roared the iron six-pounder,
Hurling death!

Anonymous.

THE UNITED STATES.

EVEN years long was the bow
Of battle bent, and the heightening
Storm-heaps convulsed with the throe
Of their uncontainable lightning;

Seven years long heard the sea

Crash of navies and wave-borne thunder;

Then drifted the cloud-rack a-lee,

And new stars were seen, a world's wonder;

Each by her sisters made bright,

All binding all to their stations,
Cluster of manifold light
Startling the old constellations:
Men looked up and grew pale:

Was it a comet or star,
Omen of blessing or bale,
Hung o'er the ocean afar?

Stormy the day of her birth:
Was she not born of the strong,
She, the last ripeness of earth,
Beautiful, prophesied long?
Stormy the days of her prime:
Hers are the pulses that beat
Higher for perils sublime,
Making them fawn at her feet.
Was she not born of the strong?
Was she not born of the wise?
Daring and counsel belong
Of right to her confident eyes:
Human and motherly they,
Careless of station or race:
Hearken! her children to-day

Shout for the joy of her face.

James Russell Lowell.

OUR COUNTRY.

ON print vers were reared on holy graves;

N primal rocks she wrote her name;

The golden seed that bore her came

Swift-winged with prayer o'er ocean waves.

The Forest bowed his solemn crest,
And open flung his sylvan doors;

Meek Rivers led the appointed guest

To clasp the wide-embracing shores;

Till, fold by fold, the broidered land

To swell her virgin vestments grew,
While sages, strong in heart and hand,
Her virtue's fiery girdle drew.

O Exile of the wrath of kings!
O Pilgrim Ark of Liberty!
The refuge of divinest things,
Their record must abide in thee!

First in the glories of thy front

Let the crown-jewel, Truth, be found;
Thy right hand fling, with generous wont,
Love's happy chain to farthest bound!

Let Justice, with the faultless scales,
Hold fast the worship of thy sons;
Thy Commerce spread her shining sails
Where no dark tide of rapine runs!

So link thy ways to those of God,

So follow firm the heavenly laws,
That stars may greet thee, warrior-browed,
And storm-sped angels hail thy cause!

O Land, the measure of our prayers,
Hope of the world in grief and wrong,
Be thine the tribute of the years,
The gift of Faith, the crown of Song!
Julia Ward How.

I

THE EMIGRANTS.

CANNOT take my eyes away
From you, ye busy, bustling band.
Your little all to see you lay,

Each, in the waiting seaman's hand!

Ye men, who from your necks set down
The heavy basket, on the earth,
Of bread from German corn, baked brown
By German wives, on German hearth!

And you, with braided queues so neat,

Black-Forest maidens, slim and brown, How careful on the sloop's green seat

You set your pails and pitchers down!

Ah! oft have home's cool, shady tanks
These pails and pitchers filled for you:
On far Missouri's silent banks

Shall these the scenes of home renew:

The stone-rimmed fount in village street, That, as ye stooped, betrayed your smiles; The hearth and its familiar seat;

The mantel and the pictured tiles.

Soon, in the far and wooded West,

Shall log-house walls therewith be graced; Soon many a tired and tawny guest

Shall sweet refreshment from them taste.

From them shall drink the Cherokee,

Faint with the hot and dusty chase; No more from German vintage ye

Shall bear them home, in leaf-crowned grace.

Oh, say, why seek ye other lands?

The Neckar's vale hath wine and corn;
Full of dark firs the Schwarzwald stands;
In Spessart rings the Alp-herd's horn.

Ah! in strange forests how ye 'll yearn
For the green mountains of your home,
To Deutschland's yellow wheatfields turn,
In spirit o'er her vine-hills roam!

How will the form of days grown pale
In golden dreams float softly by!
Like some unearthly, mystic tale,
'T will stand before fond memory's eye.

The boatman calls! go hence in peace!
God bless ye, man and wife and sire!
Bless all your fields with rich increase,
And crown each true heart's pure desire!
Ferdinand Freiligrath. Tr. C. T. Brooks

FOUR

THE NATION'S DEAD.

OUR hundred thousand men,
The brave, the good, the true,
In tangled wood, in mountain glen,
On battle plain, in prison pen,