O, what a shout there went From the black regiment! "Charge!" Trump and drum awoke; "Freedom!" their battle-cry, Hundreds on hundreds fell; GEORGE HENRY BOKER. SHERIDAN'S RIDE. UP from the South at break of day, Under his spurning feet the road And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace ire, The first that the General saw were the groups him both, THE LITTLE CLOUD. As when, on Carmel's sterile steep, There came at last a little cloud, Scarce larger than the human hand, Spreading and swelling till it broke In showers on all the herbless land. And hearts were glad, and shouts went up, Even so our eyes have waited long; But now a little cloud appears, Spreading and swelling as it glides Onward into the coming years. Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band, True as the steel of their tried blades, Heroes in heart and hand. There had the Persian's thousands stood, And now there breathed that haunted air An hour passed on, the Turk awoke : His few surviving comrades saw His smile when rang their proud hurrah, Like flowers at set of sun. Come to the bridal chamber, death, Come to the mother's, when she feels, For the first time, her first-born's breath; Come when the blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm, With banquet song and dance and wine, And thou art terrible; the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, And all we know, or dream, or fear Of agony, are thine. But to the hero, when his sword Has won the battle for the free, Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word, The thanks of millions yet to be. Of sky and stars to prisoned men ; Thy summons welcome as the cry Bozzaris! with the storied brave Greece nurtured in her glory's time, Rest thee; there is no prouder grave, Even in her own proud clime. She wore no funeral weeds for thee, Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume, Like torn branch from death's leafless tree, In sorrow's pomp and pageantry, The heartless luxury of the tomb. But she remembers thee as one Long loved, and for a season gone. For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed, Her marble wrought, her music breathed; For thee she rings the birthday bells; Of thee her babes' first lisping tells; For thine her evening prayer is said At palace couch and cottage bed. Her soldier, closing with the foe, Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow; His plighted maiden, when she fears For him, the joy of her young years, Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears. And she, the mother of thy boys, Though in her eye and faded cheek Is read the grief she will not speak, The memory of her buried joys, Talk of thy doom without a sigh ; Was Freedom's home or Glory's grave! When man was worthy of thy clime. POLAND. FROM "THE PLEASURES OF MEMORY." BYRON. Is there no hand on high to shield the brave? He said, and on the rampart-heights arrayed His trusty warriors, few, but undismayed; Firm-paced and slow, a horrid front they form, Still as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm; Low murmuring sounds along their banners fly, Revenge, or death, the watchword and reply; Then pealed the notes, omnipotent to charm, And the loud tocsin tolled their last alarm!-In vain, alas in vain, ye gallant few! From rank to rank your volleyed thunder flew :O, bloodiest picture in the book of Time ! Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime; Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe, Strength in her arms, nor mercy in her woe! Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear, WARSAW's last champion from her height sur- When the glare of noonday scorches the brain, veyed, Wide o'er the fields, a waste of ruin laid; "O Heaven!" he cried, "my bleeding country save! When our parchéd lips seek water in vain, Thou canst make champagne corks fly At the groaning tables of luxury. A graceless, worthless wight, etc. When we, as we rush to the strangling fight, When lance and bullet come whistling by, If on the red field our bell should toll, A pitiful exit thine shall be ; No German maid shall weep for thee, Man for man, Swing the battle-sword who can! And stop her bloody lips, she takes no heed How one clear word would draw an avalanche Of living sons around her, to succeed The vanished generations. Can she count These oil-eaters, with large, live, mobile mouths Agape for macaroni, in the amount Of consecrated heroes of her south's Bright rosary? The pitcher at the fount, The gift of gods, being broken, she much loathes To let the ground-leaves of the place confer A natural bowl. So henceforth she would seem No nation, but the poet's pensioner, With alms from every land of song and dream, While aye her pipers sadly pipe of her, Until their proper breaths, in that extreme Of sighing, split the reed on which they played! ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. A COURT LADY. I. KURNER. Translation of HER hair was tawny with gold, her eyes with CHARLES T. BROOKS. FROM CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. Whose strong hearts beat through stone, or charged again The paints with fire of souls electrical, Or broke up heaven for music. What more then? Why, then, no more. The chaplet's last beads fall In naming the last saintship within ken, And, after that, none prayeth in the land. Alas, this Italy has too long swept Heroic ashes up for hour-glass sand; Of her own past, impassioned nympholept! Consenting to be nailed here by the hand To the very bay-tree under which she stepped A queen of old, and plucked a leafy branch. And, licensing the world too long indeed To use her broad phylacteries to stanch She stood in the early morning, and said to her maidens, "Bring That silken robe made ready to wear at the court of the king. V. 'Bring me the clasps of diamond, lucid, clear of the mote, Clasp me the large at the waist, and clasp me the small at the throat. VI. "Diamonds to fasten the hair, and diamonds to fasten the sleeves, Laces to drop from their rays, like a powder of snow from the eaves." VII. Gorgeous she entered the sunlight which gathered her up in a flame, While, straight in her open carriage, she to the hospital came. |