Furl that Banner! True, ’tis
gory,
Yet ’tis wreathed around with glory,
And ’t will live in song and story
Though its folds are in the
dust!
For its fame on brightest pages,
Penned by poets and by sages,
Shall go sounding down the ages—
Furl its folds though now
we must.
Furl that Banner, softly, slowly!
Treat it gently—it is holy,
For it droops above the dead.
Touch it not—unfold it never;
Let it droop there, furled forever,—
For its people’s
hopes are fled!
ABRAM JOSEPH RYAN.
* * * * *
ALL.
There hangs a sabre, and there a rein,
With a rusty buckle and green curb chain;
A pair of spurs on the old gray wall,
And a mouldy saddle—well, that
is all.
Come out to the stable—it is
not far;
The moss grown door is hanging ajar.
Look within! There’s an empty
stall,
Where once stood a charger, and that is
all.
The good black horse came riderless home,
Flecked with blood drops as well as foam;
See yonder hillock where dead leaves fall;
The good black horse pined to death—that’s
all.
All? O, God! it is all I can speak.
Question me not—I am old and
weak;
His sabre and his saddle hang on the wall,
And his horse pined to death—I
have told you all.
FRANCIS ALEXANDER DURIVAGE.
* * * * *
THE CLOSING SCENE.
Within the sober realm of leafless trees,
The russet year inhaled the
dreamy air;
Like some tanned reaper, in his hour of
ease,
When all the fields are lying
brown and bare.
The gray barns looking from their hazy
hills,
O’er the dun waters
widening in the vales,
Sent down the air a greeting to the mills
On the dull thunder of alternate
flails.
All sights were mellowed and all sounds
subdued,
The hills seemed further and
the stream sang low,
As in a dream the distant woodman hewed
His winter log with many a
muffled blow.
The embattled forests, erewhile armed
with gold,
Their banners bright with
every martial hue,
Now stood like some sad, beaten host of
old,
Withdrawn afar in Time’s
remotest blue.
On slumb’rous wings the vulture
held his flight;
The dove scarce heard its
sighing mate’s complaint;
And, like a star slow drowning in the
light,
The village church-vane seemed
to pale and faint.
The sentinel-cock upon the hillside crew,—
Crew thrice,—and
all was stiller than before;
Silent, till some replying warden blew
His alien horn, and then was
heard no more.
Where erst the jay, within the elm’s
tall crest,
Made garrulous trouble round
her unfledged young;
And where the oriole hung her swaying
nest,
By every light wind like a
censer swung;—