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. Some more substantial boon Into War's tumult rude; 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 At life's dear peril wrought for her, 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, Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon? The little that we see From doubt is never free; Is but half-nobly true; 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 Which haunts the soul and will not let it be, Still beaconing from the heights of undegenerate years. VIII We sit here in the Promised Land That flows with Freedom's honey and milk; But 't was they won it, sword in hand, Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk. We welcome back our bravest and our best; Ah me! not all! some come not with the rest, Who went forth brave and bright as any here! 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, 250 I with uncovered head Salute the sacred dead, Who went, and who return not.-Say not |