t of bird to a rarer clime
Many a youth whose death caused the blight
Of tender hearts in that long, sad time.
Nay, but this is no hour for sorrow;
They died at their duty, shall we repine?
Let us gaze hopefully on to the morrow
Praying that our lives thus shall shine.
Ring out your bugles, sound out your cheers!
Man has been God-like so may we be.
Give cheering thanks, there dry up those tears,
Widowed and orphaned, the country is free!
Wreathes of lillies and immortelles,
Scattered upon each silent mound,
Voices in loving remembrance swell,
Chanting to heaven the solemn sound,
Glad skies above, and glad earth beneath,
And grateful hearts who silently
Gather earth's flowers, and tenderly wreath
Woman's sweet token of fragility.
AT EVENTIDE.
All day had she watched and waited for his coming, and still her
strained ears caught no sounds of the footsteps she loved and longed to
hear. All day while the great sun panted on his way around the brazen
skies; all day while the busy world throbbed its mighty engines of
labor, nor witted of the breaking hearts in its midst. And now when the
eve had come, and the sun sank slowly to rest, casting his red rays over
the earth he loved, and bidding tired nature a gentle radiant
good-night, she still watched and waited. Waited while the young moon
shone silvery in the crimson flush of the eastern sky, while the one
bright star trembled as he strove to near his love; waited while the hum
of soul-wearing traffic died in the distant streets, and the merry
voices of happy children floated to her ears.
And still he came not. What kept him from her side? Had he learned the
cold lesson of self-control, or found one other thing more potent than
love? Had some cruel chain of circumstances forced him to disobey her
bidding--or--did he love another? But no, she smiles triumphantly, he
could not having known and loved her.
Sitting in the deep imbrasure of the window through which the distant
wave sounds of city life floated to her, the pages of her life seemed to
turn back, and she read the almost forgotten tale of long ago, the story
of their love. In those days his wish had been her law; his smile her
sun; his frown her wretchedness. Within his arms, earth seemed a
far-away dream of empty nothingness, and when his lips touched and clung
to hers, sweet with the perfume of the South they floated away into a
Paradise of enfolding space,
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