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To the right, to the left, and around and around,
Death whirls in its dance on the bloody ground.
God's sunlight is quenched in the fiery fight,
Over the host falls a brooding night!
Brothers, God grant when this life is o'er,
In the life to come that we meet once more!

VI.

The dead men lie bathed in the weltering blood,
And the living are blent in the slippery flood,
And the feet, as they reeling and sliding go,
Stumble still on the corpses that sleep below.
What, Francis ! Give Charlotte my last farewell."
As the dying man murmurs, the thunders swell-

"I'll give-O God! are the guns so near?

Ho comrades 1-yon volley !-look sharp to the rear !-
I'll give thy Charlotte thy last farewell.

Sleep soft! where death thickest descendeth in rain,
The friend thou forsakest thy side shall regain !"
Hitherward-thitherward reels the fight,
Dark and more darkly day glooms into night!
Brothers, God grant when this life is o'er,
In the life to come that we meet once more!

VII.

Hark to the hoofs that galloping go!

The adjutants flying

The horsemen press hard on the panting foe,

Their thunder booms in dying

Victory!

The terror has seized on the dastards all,

And their colors fall!

Victory!

Closed in the brunt of the glorious fight,

And the day, like a conqueror, burst on the night.

Trumpet and fife swelling choral aiong,

The triumph already sweeps marching in song.
Farewell, fallen brothers, though this life be o'er,

There's another in which we shall meet you once more!

SCHILLER.

30. BEFORE VICKSBURG.

["HEAD-QUARTERS 15TH ARMY CORPS,
"CAMP ON BIG BLACK RIVER, August 8, 1863.

"To the Hon. Secretary of War:

}

"SIR:-I take the liberty of asking through you that something be done for a lad named Orion P. Howe, of Waukegan, Illinois, who belongs to the 55th Illinois, but at present at home wounded. I think he is too young for West Point, but would be the very thing for a midshipman.

"When the assault at Vicksburg was at its height, on the 19th of May, and I was in front near the road, which formed my line of attack, this young lad came up to me, wounded and bleeding, with a good, healthy boy's cry, 'General Sherman, send some cartridges to Colonel Malmborg: the men are nearly all out.' 'What is the matter, my boy? They shot me in the leg, sir; but I can go to the hospital. Send the cartridges right away.' Even where we stood the shot fell thick, and I told him to go to the rear at once, I would attend to the cartridges; and off he limped. Just before he disappeared on the hill, he turned, and called, as loud as he could, 'Calibre 54.' I have not seen the lad since, and his colonel (Malmborg), on inquiry, gives me the address as above, and says he is a bright, intelligent boy, with a fair preliminary education.

"What arrested my attention then was-and what renewed my memory of the fact now is that one so young, carrying a musket-ball through his leg, should have found his way to me on that fatal spot, and delivered his message, not forgetting the very important part, even, of the calibre of his musket,-54,-which, you know, is an unusual one.

"I'll warrant that the boy has in him the elements of a man, and I commend him to the Government as one worthy the fostering care of some one of its national institutions.

"I am, with respect, your obedient servant,

W

"W. T. SHERMAN, Major-General Commandin,."]

HILE Sherman stood beneath the hottest fire,
That from the lines of Vicksburg gleamed,
And bomb-shells tumbled in their smoky gyre,
And grape-shot hissed, and case-shot screamed;
Back from the front there came,
Weeping and sorely lame,

The merest child, the youngest face

Man ever saw in such a fearful place.

2. Stifling his tears, he limped his chief to meet; But when he paused, and tottering stood,

Around the circle of his little feet

There spread a pool of bright, young blood.
Shocked at his doleful case,

Sherman cried, "Halt! front face!

Who are you? Speak, my gallant boy!"
"A drummer, sir :-Fifty-fifth Illinois."

3. "Are you not hit?" "That's nothing. Only send
Some cartridges: our men are out;

And the foe press us." "But, my little friend—”
"Don't mind me! Did you hear that shout?
What if our men be driven;

O, for the love of Heaven,

Send to my Colonel, General dear!"

"But you?" "O, I shall easily find the rear."

4. "I'll see to that," cried Sherman; and a drop,
Angels might envy, dimmed his eye,

As the boy, toiling towards the hill's hard top,
Turned round, and with his shrill child's cry
Shouted, "O, don't forget!

We'll win the battle yet!

But let our soldiers have some more,
More cartridges, sir,-calibre fifty-four!"

D

31. THE ALARM-APRIL 19, 1776.

ARKNESS closed upon the country and upon the town, but it was no night for sleep. Heralds on swift relays of horses transmitted the war-message from hand to hand, till village repeated it to village; the sea to the backwoods; the

plains to the highlands; and it was never suffered to droop, till it had been borne North, and South, and East, and West, throughout the land.

2. It spread over the bays that receive the Saco and the Penobscot. Its loud reveille broke the rest of the trappers of New Hampshire, and ringing like bugle-notes from peak o peak, overleapt the Green Mountains, swept onward to Montreal, and descended the ocean river, till the responses were echoed from the cliffs of Quebec. The hills along the Hudson told to one another the tale.

3. As the summons hurried to the South, it was one day at New York; in one more at Philadelphia; the next it lighted a watch-fire at Baltimore; thence it waked an answer at Annapolis. Crossing the Potomac near Mount Vernon, it was sent forward without a halt to Williamsburg. It traversed the Dismal Swamp to Nansemond, along the route of the first emigrants to North Carolina.

4. It moved onwards and still onwards through boundless groves of evergreen to Newbern and to Wilmington. "For God's sake, forward it by night and by day," wrote Cornelius Harnett, by the express which sped for Brunswick. Patriots of South Carolina caught up its tones at the border and dispatched it to Charleston, and through pines and palmettos and moss-clad live oaks, further to the South, till it resounded among the New England settlements beyond the Savannah

5. Hillsborough and the Mecklenburg district of North Carolina rose in triumph, now that their wearisome uncertainty had its end. The Blue Ridge took up the voice and made it heard from one end to the other of the valley of Vir ginia. The Alleghanies, as they listened, opened their bar riers that the "loud call" might pass through to the hardy riflemen on the Holston, the Watauga and the French Broad.

6. Ever renewing its strength, powerful enough even to create a commonwealth, it breathed its inspiring word to the first settlers of Kentucky; so that the hunters who made their halt in the matchless valley of Elkhorn commemorated

the nineteenth day of April, by naming their encampment LEXINGTON.

7. With one impulse the colonies sprung to arms; with one spirit they pledged themselves to each other "to be ready for the extreme event;" with one heart the continent cried "Liberty or death !" BANCROFT.

32. PAUL REVERE'S RIDE.

LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.

2. He said to his friend,-"If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church tower, as a signal-light,-
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folks to be up and to arm."

3. Then he said good-night, and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war :

A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon, like a prison-bar,

And a huge, black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

4. Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
Wandeas and watches with eager ears,

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