3.

Down in the fields all prospers well;

But now from the fields come, father—come at the daughter's call;

And come to the entry, mother—to the front door come, right away.

Fast as she can she hurries—something ominous—her steps

trembling;

She does not tarry to smooth her white hair, nor adjust her

O this is not our son's writing, yet his name is signed; O a strange hand writes for our dear son—O stricken mother's soul!

All swims before her eyes—flashes with black—she catches the main words only;

Sentences broken—gun-shot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital,

At present low, but will soon be better.

5.

Ah, now the single figure to me,

Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio, with all its cities and

farms,

Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint, By the jamb of a door leans.

6.

"Grieve not so, dear mother" (the just-grown daughter speaks through her sobs;

The little sisters huddle around, speechless and dismayed);

66

See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better."

7.

Alas, poor boy, he will never be better (nor may-be needs to be better, that brave and simple soul);

While they stand at home at the door, he is dead already; The only son is dead.

But the mother needs to be better;

She, with thin form, presently dressed in black;

By day her meals untouched—then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking,

In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep

longing,

O that she might withdraw unnoticed—silent from life escape and withdraw,

To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son!

WAR DREAMS.

I.

IN

N clouds descending, in midnight sleep, of many a face in battle,

Of the look at first of the mortally wounded, of that inde

scribable look,

Of the dead on their backs, with arms extended wide—

I dream, I dream, I dream.

2.

Of scenes of nature, the fields and the mountains,

Of the skies so beauteous after the storm, and at night the moon so unearthly bright,

Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches and gather the heaps—

I dream, I dream, I dream.

3.

Long have they passed, long lapsed—faces, and trenches, and fields:

Long through the carnage I moved with a callous composure, or away from the fallen

Onward I sped at the time. But now of their faces and forms, at night,

I dream, I dream, I dream.

WHILE

THE VETERAN'S VISION.

HILE my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long,

And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the mystic

midnight passes,

And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear, the breath of my infant,

There in the room, as I wake from sleep, this vision presses upon me.

The engagement opens there and then, in my busy brain

unreal;

The skirmishers begin—they crawl cautiously ahead—I

hear the irregular snap! snap!

I hear the sound of the different missiles—the short t-h-t! t-h-t! of the rifle-balls;

I see the shells exploding, leaving small white clouds—I hear the great shells shrieking as they pass;

The grape, like the hum and whirr of wind through the trees, (quick, tumultuous, now the contest rages!) All the scenes at the batteries themselves rise in detail before me again ;

The crashing and smoking—the pride of the men in their

pieces;

The chief gunner ranges and sights his piece, and selects a fuse of the right time;

After firing, I see him lean aside, and look eagerly off to note the effect;

Elsewhere I hear the cry of a regiment charging—the

young colonel leads himself this time, with brandished sword;

I see the gaps cut by the enemy's volleys, quickly filled up—no delay;

I breathe the suffocating smoke—then the flat clouds hover low, concealing all;

Now a strange lull comes for a few seconds, not a shot fired on either side;

Then resumed, the chaos louder than ever, with eager calls, and orders of officers;

While from some distant part of the field the wind wafts to my ears a shout of applause, (some special success ;) And ever the sound of the cannon, far or near, rousing, even in dreams, a devilish exultation, and all the old mad joy, in the depths of my soul;

And ever the hastening of infantry shifting positionsbatteries, cavalry, moving hither and thither;

The falling, dying, I heed not—the wounded, dripping and red, I heed not some to the rear are hobbling;