Tell us, O mother, nay, thou canst not speak, The ensigns waved, the brazen clarions blew, But thy fond eyes shall answer, And o'er the reeking spoils of bandit thou tell war With outspread wings the cruel eagles flew ; Arms, treasures, captives, kings in clank ing chains Urged on by trampling cohorts bronzed and scarred, That Nature's record is not first to And wild-eyed wonders snared on Lyb Dream-like these years of conflict, not a dream! ian plains, has won, Death, ruin, ashes tell the awful tale, For this is Heaven's same battle, Read by the flaming war-track's lurid gleam : No dream, but truth that turns the nations pale! For on the pillar raised by martyr hands joined of old When Athens fought for us at Mara thon! - Behold a vision none hath understood ! The breaking of the Apocalyptic seal ; Burns the rekindled beacon of the Twice rings the summons. - Hail and And with a yell from all the demon hosts | Come with your comrades, the returning Falls the great star called Wormwood from the sky! Bitter it mingles with the poisoned flow Of the warm rivers winding to the shore, Thousands must drink the waves of death and woe, But the star Wormwood stains the heavens no more! Peace smiles at last; the Nation calls her sons To sheathe the sword; her battle-flag she furls, For him no spring shall bid the leaf unfold: Speaks in glad thunders from unshotted What Love could speak, by sudden grief guns, No terror shrouded in the smokewreath's curls. O ye that fought for Freedom, living, dead, One sacred host of God's anointed Queen, For every holy drop your veins have shed oppressed, What swiftly summoned Memory tell, is told. Even as the bells, in one consenting chime, Filled with their sweet vibrations all the air, We breathe a welcome to our bowers So joined all voices, in that mournful bed time, His genius, wisdom, virtues, to declare. What place is left for words of measured praise, Till calm-eyed History, with her iron pen, Grooves in the unchanging rock the final phrase That shapes his image in the souls of men ? Mark when your old battalions form Yet while the echoes still repeat his Love, by his beating pulses taught, will | Too large his compass for the nicer skill Like the tired heaving of a grief-worn Found in his cunning hand a stringless Each separate talent counted some- The lips of listening throngs in sweet thing less. A little hillock, if it lonely stand, While the broad summit of the table- amaze, Moved in all breasts the selfsame human heart. Subdued his accents, as of one who tries To press some care, some haunting sadness down; Seems with its belt of clouds a level His smile half shadow; and to stranger Unsleeping Memory, strengthening He was not armed to wrestle with the Before the blast of Northern vengeance | Shall warring aliens share her holy So shall we blazon on the shaft we To wreathe his bust, and scatter purple raise, Telling our grief, our pride, to un born years, flowers, Not his the need, but ours! "He who had lived the mark of all We call those poets who are first to Beyond the storm-vexed islands of The greatest for its greatness is half the deep, Where Genoa's roving mariner was blown? known, Stretching beyond our narrow quadrant-lines, Her twofold Saint's-day let our Eng- As in that world of Nature all outgrown Jand keep; Where Calaveras lifts his awful pines, |