To him who, deadly hurt, agen Thet rived the Rebel line asunder? 'T ain't right to hev the young go fust, All throbbin' full o' gifts an' graces, Leavin' life's paupers dry ez dust To try an make b'lieve fill their places: Nothin' but tells us wut we miss, 141 Ther' 's gaps our lives can't never fay in, An' thet world seems so fur from this Lef' for us loafers to grow gray in! My eyes cloud up for rain; my mouth Will take to twitchin' roun' the corners; I pity mothers, tu, down South, For all they sot among the scorners: I'd sooner take my chance to stan' At Jedgment where your meanest slave is, Than at God's bar hol' up a han' Ez drippin' red ez yourn, Jeff Davis! 150 Come, while our country feels the lift Thet tarries long in han's o' cowards! Come, sech ez mothers prayed for, when They kissed their cross with lips thet quivered, An' bring fair wages for brave men The Atlantic Monthly, April, 1865. ON BOARD THE '76 Written for Mr. Bryant's Seventieth Birthday, November 3, 1864. Our ship lay tumbling in an angry sea, Her rudder gone, her mainmast o'er the side; Her scuppers, from the waves' clutch staggering free, 1 General Charles Russell Lowell, a nephew, at the battle of Cedar Creek, in which he was mortally wounded. There our foe wallowed, like a wounded brute The fiercer for his hurt. What now were best? Once more tug bravely at the peril's root, Though death came with it? Or evade the test If right or wrong in this God's world of ours Be leagued with mightier powers? 30 Some, faintly loyal, felt their pulses lag With the slow beat that doubts and then despairs; Some, caitiff, would have struck the starry flag That knits us with our past, and makes us heirs Of deeds high-hearted as were ever done 'Neath the all-seeing sun. Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil Amid the dust of books to find her, Content at last, for guerdon of their toil, With the cast mantle she hath left behind her. Many in sad faith sought for her, Many with crossed hands sighed for her; But these, our brothers, fought for her, At life's dear peril wrought for her, So loved her that they died for her, 50 Tasting the raptured fleetness Of her divine completeness: Their higher instinct knew Those love her best who to themselves are true, And what they dare to dream of, dare to do; They followed her and found her Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind, But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her. Where faith made whole with deed 60 They saw her plumed and mailed, Some more substantial boon Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon? The little that we see Is but half-nobly true; With our laborious hiving What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, 80 Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss, Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires, After our little hour of strut and rave, With all our pasteboard passions and desires, Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires, Are tossed pell-mell together in the A conscience more divine than we, A gladness fed with secret tears, A vexing, forward-reaching sense Of some more noble permanence; A light across the sea, Which haunts the soul and will not let it be, Still beaconing from the heights of undegenerate years. I strive to mix some gladness with my strain, But the sad strings complain, 240 I sweep them for a pæan, but they wane Into a dirge, and die away, in pain. Dark to the triumph which they died to gain : Fitlier may others greet the living, I with uncovered head Salute the sacred dead, 250 Who went, and who return not. Say not |