VI.

    The lull of the Winter is over; and Spring
    Comes back, as delicious and buoyant a thing,
    As airy, and fairy, and lightsome, and bland,
    As if not a sorrow was dark’ning the land;—­
    So little has Nature of passion or part
    In the woes and the throes of humanity’s heart.

    The wild tide of battle runs red,—­dashes high,
    And blots out the splendour of earth and of sky;
    The blue air is heavy, and sulph’rous, and dun,
    And the breeze on its wings bears the boom of the gun. 
    In faster and fiercer and deadlier shocks,
    The thunderous billows are hurled on the rocks;
    And our Valley becomes, amid Spring’s softest breath,
    The valley, alas! of the shadow of death. 
    The crash of the onset,—­the plunge and the roll,
    Reach down to the depth of each patriot’s soul;
    It quivers—­for since it is human, it must;
    But never a tremor of doubt or distrust,
    Once blanches the cheek, or is wrung from the mouth,
    Or lurks in the eye of the sons of the South.

    What need for dismay?  Let the live surges roar,
    And leap in their fury, our fastnesses o’er,
    And threaten our beautiful Valley to fill
    With rapine and ruin more terrible still: 
    What fear we?—­See Jackson! his sword in his hand,
    Like the stern rocks around him, immovable stand,—­
    The wisdom, the skill and the strength that he boasts,
    Sought ever from him who is Leader of Hosts: 
    —­He speaks in the name of his God:—­lo! the tide,—­
    The red sea of battle, is seen to divide;
    The pathway of victory cleaves the dark flood;—­
    And the foe is o’erwhelmed in a deluge of blood! 
    The spirit of Alice no longer is bowed
    By the troubles, and tumults, and terrors, that crowd
    So closely around her:—­the willow’s lithe form
    Bends meekly to meet the wild rush of the storm.

    Yet pale as Cassandra, unconscious of joy,
    With visions of Greeks at the gates of her Troy,
    All day she has waited and watched on the lawn,
    Till the purple and gold of the sunset are gone;
    For the battle draws near her:—­few leagues intervene
    Her home and that Valley of slaughter, between.

    The tidings and rumors come thick and come fast,
    As riders fly hotly and breathlessly past;
    They tell of the onslaught,—­the headlong attack
    Of the foe with a quadruple force at his back: 
    They boast how they hurl themselves,—­shiver and fall
    Before their stout rampart, the valiant “Stonewall.”

    At length, with the gradual fading of day,—­
    The tokens of battle are floated away: 
    The booming no longer makes sullen the air,
    And the silence of night seems as holy as prayer.

    Gray shadows still linger the beeches among,
    And scarce has the earliest matin been sung,
    Ere Alice with Beverly pale at her side,
    Yet firm as his mother, is ready to ride.