Somewhere about you a tragedy grim.
All your bright rays have a sullen refracting;
Everywhere looms up the image of _him_:

Him,--whom you love not, there is no concealing.
How _could_ you love him, apart from his gold?
Nothing now left but your fire-fly wheeling,--
Flashing one moment, then pallid and cold!

Yet you've accepted the life that he offers,--
Sunk to his level,--not raised him to yours.
All your fair flowers have their roots in his coffers:
Empty the gold-dust, and then what endures?

So, then, we leave you! Your world is not ours.
Alice and I will not trouble you more.
Almost too heavy the scent of these flowers
Down the broad stairway. Quick, open the door!

Here, in the free air, we'll pray for you, lady!
You who are changed to us,--gone from us,--lost!
Soon the Atlantic shall part us, already
Parted by gulfs that can never be crossed!

CHARLESTON UNDER ARMS.

On Saturday morning, January 19, 1861, the steamer Columbia, from New
York, lay off the harbor of Charleston in full sight of Fort Sumter. It
is a circumstance which perhaps would never have reached the knowledge
of the magazine-reading world, nor have been of any importance to it,
but for the attendant fact that I, the writer of this article, was on
board the steamer. It takes two events to make a consequence, as well as
two parties to make a bargain.

The sea was smooth; the air was warmish and slightly misty; the low
coast showed bare sand and forests of pines. The dangerous bar of the
port, now partially deprived of its buoys, and with its main channel
rendered perilous by the hulks of sunken schooners, revealed itself
plainly, half a mile ahead of us, in a great crescent of yellow water,
plainly distinguishable from the steel-gray of the outer ocean. Two
or three square-rigged vessels were anchored to the southward of us,
waiting for the tide or the tugs, while four or five pilot-boats tacked
up and down in the lazy breeze, watching for the cotton-freighters which
ought at this season to crowd the palmetto wharves.

"I wish we could get the duties on those ships to pay some of our
military bills," said a genteel, clean-spoken Charlestonian, to a long,
green, kindly-faced youth, from I know not what Southern military
academy.

We had arrived off the harbor about midnight, but had not entered, for
lack of a beacon whereby to shape our course. Now we must wait until
noon for the tide, st