ve as our own?
With maidens and mothers at work on their knees,
When ever were soldiers as fearless as these?

June's flower-wreathed sceptre is dropped with a sigh,
And forth like an empress steps stately July:
She sits all unveiled, amidst sunshine and balms,
As Zenobia sat in her City of Palms!

Not yet has the martial horizon grown dun,
Not yet has the terrible conflict begun:
But the tumult of legions,--the rush and the roar,
Break over our borders, like waves on the shore.
Along the Potomac, the confident foe
Stands marshalled for onset,--prepared, at a blow,
To vanquish the daring rebellion, and fling
Utter ruin at once on the arrogant thing!

How sovran the silence that broods o'er the sky,
And ushers the twenty-first morn of July;
--Date, written in fire on history's scroll,--
--Date, drawn in deep blood-lines on many a soul!

There is quiet at Beechenbrook: Alice's brow
Is wearing a Sabbath tranquility now,
As softly she reads from the page on her knee,--
"Thou wilt keep him in peace who is stayed upon Thee!"
When Sophy bursts breathlessly into the room,--
"Oh! mother! we hear it,--we hear it!.., the boom
Of the fast and the fierce cannonading!--it shook
The ground till it trembled, along by the brook."

One instant the listener sways in her seat,--
The paralysed heart has forgotten to beat;
The next, with the speed and the frenzy of fear,
She gains the green hillock, and pauses to hear.

Again and again the reverberant sound
Is fearfully felt in the tremulous ground;
Again and again on their senses it thrills,
Like thunderous echoes astray in the hills.

On tip-toe,--the summer wind lifting his hair,
With nostril expanded, and scenting the air
Like a mettled young war-horse that tosses his mane,
And frettingly champs at the bit and the rein,--
Stands eager, exultant, a twelve-year-old boy,
His face all aflame with a rapturous joy.

"_That's_ music for heroes in battle array!
Oh, mother! I feel like a Roman to-day!
The Romans I read of in Plutarch;--Yes, men
Thought it noble to die for their liberties then!
And I've wondered if soldiers were ever so bold,
So gallant and brave, as those heroes of old.
--There!--listen!--that volley peals out the reply;
They prove it is sweet for their country to die: