Perhaps 'twas boyish fancy,-for the reader But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows, While the whole camp, with "Nell" on English meadows, Wandered and lost their way. And so in mountain solitudes o'ertaken As by some spell divine Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken From out the gusty pine. Lost is that camp, and wasted all its fire : Lost is that camp! but let its fragrant story With hop-vines' incense all the pensive glory And on that grave where English oak and holly And laural wreaths intwine, Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly, This spray of Western pine. FRANCIS BRET HARTE. THE ENGINEER'S SIGNAL. Two low whistles, quaint and clear, That was the signal that Guild, 'tis saidGave to his wife at Providence, As through the sleeping town, and thence, Out in the light, Down past the farms, lying white, he sped; As a husband's greeting, scant no doubt, So, love, to you! Working or waiting, Good-night!" it said. Brisk young bagmen, tourists fine, Smiled as the signal, sharp, intense, Pierced through the shadows of Providence"Nothing amiss Nothing-it is! Only Guild calling his wife," they said, Summer and winter, the old refrain Rang o'er the billows of ripening grain, Pierced through the budding boughs o'erhead, "To our trust true, First of all, duty-Good-night," it said. And then, one night, it was heard no more, To his trust true, Guild lay under his engine, dead. FRANCIS BRET HARTE. BATTLE-HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC. MINE eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord : He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored: He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on. I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps: His day is marching on. I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnish'd rows of steel: "As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on." He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat: Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on. In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me: As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on. JULIA WARD Howe. THE OLD FLAG. OFF with your hat as the flag goes by! You're man enough for a thrill that goes Ay! the lump just then in your throat that rose Lift up the boy on your shoulder, high, Those stripes would be red as the sunset sky The man that bore it with Death has lain The man that bears it is bent and old, The old tune thunders through all the air, |