crowded cots,
The bleaching bones, the battle blots,--
And writ on many a nameless grave, a legend of forget-me-nots.

"I see the gorged prison-den,
The dead line and the pent-up pen,
The thousands quartered in the fen,
The living-deaths of skin and bone that were the goodly shapes of men.

"And still the bloody Dew must fall!
And His great Darkness with the Pall
Of His dread Judgment cover all,
Till the Dead Nation rise Transformed by Truth to triumph over all!"

"And Last--and Last I see--The Dead."
Thus saith the Keeper of the Key,
And the Great Seal of Destiny,
Whose eye is the blue canopy,
And leaves the Pall of His great Darkness over all the Land and Sea.

FORCEYTHE WILLSON.

* * * * *

BROTHER JONATHAN'S LAMENT FOR
SISTER CAROLINE.

[March 25, 1861, South Carolina having adopted the Ordinance of
Secession.]

She has gone,--she has left us in passion and pride--
Our stormy-browed sister, so long at our side!
She has torn her own star from our firmament's glow,
And turned on her brother the face of a foe!

O Caroline, Caroline, child of the sun,
We can never forget that our hearts have been one,--
Our foreheads both sprinkled in Liberty's name,
From the fountain of blood with the finger of flame!

You were always too ready to fire at a touch;
But we said: "She is hasty--she does not mean much."
We have scowled when you uttered some turbulent threat;
But friendship still whispered: "Forgive and forget."

Has our love all died out? Have its altars grown cold?
Has the curse come at last which the fathers foretold?
Then Nature must teach us the strength of the chain
That her petulant children would sever in vain.

They may fight till the buzzards are gorged with their spoil,--
Till the harvest grows black as it rots in the soil,
Till the wolves and the catamounts troop from their caves,
And the shark tracks the pirate, the lord of the waves:

In vain is the strife! When its fury is past,
Their fortunes must flow in one channel at last,
As the torrents that rush from the mountains of snow
Roll mingled in peace in the valleys below.

Our Union is river, lake, ocean, and sky;
Man breaks not the medal when God cuts the die!
Though darkened with sulphur, though cloven with steel,
The blue arch will brighten, the waters will heal!

O Caroline, Carol