prostrated by
sickness and mental suffering. Another poem, more mournful but with a
beautiful thought of hope beyond, comes from that dismal prison-pen,
Camp Chase. Colonel W. S. Hawkins, a brave Tennesseean, who was held
there two long years, still kept up heart and ministered to his
fellow-sufferers day and night. The close of the war alone released
him, to drag his shattered frame to "his own, fair sunny land," and lay
it in the soil he loved so well. But he has left a living monument; and
the tender pathos of "The Hero without a Name"--and the flawless
poetical gem that closes his "Last of Earth," will be remembered as
long as the sacrifices of their noble author. The pent walls of other
military prisons sent forth plaintive records of misery, as well as
stirring strains of hope unconquered; but the two here named are easily
first of the rebel-prisoner poets.

Dirges for the great dead became a popular form, in which the spirit of
southern song poured itself out. I had in my collection no fewer than
forty-seven monodies and dirges on Stonewall Jackson; some dozens on
Ashby and a score on Stuart. Some of these were critically good; all of
them high in sentiment; but Flash's "Jackson"--heretofore quoted, when
noting that irremediable loss--stands incomparably above the rest.
Short, vigorous, completely rounded--it breathes that high spirit of
hope and trust, held by that warrior people; and, not alone the finest
war dirge of the South, it is excelled by no sixteen lines in any
language, for power, lilt and tenderness!

Perhaps Thompson's "Dirge for Ashby," Randall's song of triumph over
dead John Pelham and Mrs. Margaret Preston's "Ashby," may rank
side-by-side next to the "Jackson." The modest author of the last-named
did not claim it, until the universal voice of her people called for
her name; and it is noteworthy that large numbers of war-song writers
hid from their just meed, behind the sheltering anonymous. And the
universal characteristic of this dirge-poetry is not its mournful
tenderness--while nothing could be more touching than that; but its
strong expression of faith in the efficacy of the sacrifice and in the
full atonement of the martyrdom!

The battle-breeze bore back to the writers no sound of weak wailing. It
wafted only the sob of manly grief, tempered by a solemn joyousness;
and--coming from men of many temperaments, amid wide-differing scenes
and circumstance--every monody bears impress of the