They fell, who lifted up a hand
  And bade the sun in heaven to stand! 
  They smote and fell, who set the bars
  Against the progress of the stars,
  And stayed the march of Motherland!

  They stood, who saw the future come
  On through the fight’s delirium! 
  They smote and stood, who held the hope
  Of nations on that slippery slope
  Amid the cheers of Christendom.

  God lives!  He forged the iron will
    That clutched and held that trembling hill. 
  God lives and reigns!  He built and lent
  The heights for Freedom’s battlement
  Where floats her flag in triumph still!

  Fold up the banners!  Smelt the guns! 
  Love rules.  Her gentler purpose runs. 
  A mighty mother turns in tears
  The pages of her battle years,
  Lamenting all her fallen sons!

WILL HENRY THOMPSON.

* * * * *

LEE TO THE REAR.

[An incident in one of the battles in the Wilderness at the beginning of the campaign of 1864.]

  Dawn of a pleasant morning in May
  Broke through the Wilderness cool and gray;
  While perched in the tallest tree-tops, the birds
  Were carolling Mendelssohn’s “Songs without Words.”

  Far from the haunts of men remote,
  The brook brawled on with a liquid note;
  And Nature, all tranquil and lovely, wore
  The smile of the spring, as in Eden of yore.

  Little by little, as daylight increased,
  And deepened the roseate flush in the East—­
  Little by little did morning reveal
  Two long glittering lines of steel;

  Where two hundred thousand bayonets gleam,
  Tipped with the light of the earliest beam,
  And the faces are sullen and grim to see
  In the hostile armies of Grant and Lee.

  All of a sudden, ere rose the sun,
  Pealed on the silence the opening gun—­
  A little white puff of smoke there came,
  And anon the valley was wreathed in flame.

  Down on the left of the Rebel lines,
  Where a breastwork stands in a copse of pines,
  Before the Rebels their ranks can form,
  The Yankees have carried the place by storm.

  Stars and Stripes on the salient wave,
  Where many a hero has found a grave,
  And the gallant Confederates strive in vain
  The ground they have drenched with their blood, to regain.

  Yet louder the thunder of battle roared—­
  Yet a deadlier fire on the columns poured;
  Slaughter infernal rode with Despair,
  Furies twain, through the murky air.

  Not far off, in the saddle there sat
  A gray-bearded man in a black slouched hat;
  Not much moved by the fire was he,
  Calm and resolute Robert Lee.

  Quick and watchful he kept his eye
  On the bold Rebel brigades close by,—­
  Reserves that were standing (and dying) at ease,
  While the tempest of wrath toppled over the trees.