His face is hidden in his beard,
  But his heart peers out at eye—­
And such a heart! like mountain-pool
  Where no man passes by.

He thinks of Hill—­a brave soul gone;
  And Ashby dead in pale disdain;
And Stuart with the Rupert-plume,
  Whose blue eye never shall laugh again.

He hears the drum; he sees our boys
  From his wasted fields return;
Ladies feast them on strawberries,
  And even to kiss them yearn.

He marks them bronzed, in soldier-trim,
  The rifle proudly borne;
They bear it for an heir-loom home,
  And he—­disarmed—­jail-worn.

Home, home—­his heart is full of it;
  But home he never shall see,
Even should he stand upon the spot;
  ’Tis gone!—­where his brothers be.

The cypress-moss from tree to tree
  Hangs in his Southern land;
As weird, from thought to thought of his
  Run memories hand in hand.

And so he lingers—­lingers on
  In the City of the Foe—­
His cousins and his countrymen
  Who see him listless go.

A Grave near Petersburg, Virginia.[19]

Head-board and foot-board duly placed—­
  Grassed in the mound between;
Daniel Drouth is the slumberer’s name—­
  Long may his grave be green!

Quick was his way—­a flash and a blow,
  Full of his fire was he—­
A fire of hell—­’tis burnt out now—­
  Green may his grave long be!

May his grave be green, though he
  Was a rebel of iron mould;
Many a true heart—­true to the Cause,
  Through the blaze of his wrath lies cold.

May his grave be green—­still green
  While happy years shall run;
May none come nigh to disinter
  The—­Buried Gun.

“Formerly a Slave.” 
An idealized Portrait, by E. Vedder, in the Spring
Exhibition of the National Academy, 1865.

The sufferance of her race is shown,
  And retrospect of life,
Which now too late deliverance dawns upon;
  Yet is she not at strife.

Her children’s children they shall know
  The good withheld from her;
And so her reverie takes prophetic cheer—­
  In spirit she sees the stir

Far down the depth of thousand years,
  And marks the revel shine;
Her dusky face is lit with sober light,
  Sibylline, yet benign.

The Apparition.  (A Retrospect.)

Convulsions came; and, where the field
  Long slept in pastoral green,
A goblin-mountain was upheaved
(Sure the scared sense was all deceived),
  Marl-glen and slag-ravine.

The unreserve of Ill was there,
  The clinkers in her last retreat;
But, ere the eye could take it in,
Or mind could comprehension win,
  It sunk!—­and at our feet.

So, then, Solidity’s a crust—­
  The core of fire below;
All may go well for many a year,
But who can think without a fear
  Of horrors that happen so?