at them,--we'll turn them,--and then
We'll ride them down madly!--On! Onward! my men!"

The feverish frenzy o'erwearies him soon,
And back on his pillows he sinks in a swoon.

And sometimes, when Alice is wetting his lip,
He turns from the draught, and refuses to sip:
--"'Tis sweet, pretty angel!--but yonder there lies
A famishing comrade, with death in his eyes:
His need is far greater,... Sir Philip, I think,--
Or was it Sir Philip?... go, go!--let him drink!"

And oft, with a sort of bewildered amaze,
On her face he would fasten the wistfullest gaze:
--"You are kind, but a hospital nurse cannot be
Like Alice,--my tenderest Alice,--to me.
Oh! I know there's at Beechenbrook, many a tear,
As she asks all the day,--'Will he never be here?'"

But Nature, kind healer! brings sovereignest balm,
And strokes the wild pulses with coolness and calm;

The conflict so equal, so stubborn, is past,
And life gains the hardly-won battle at last.
How sweet through the long convalescence to lie,
And from the low window, gaze out at the sky,
And float, as the zephyrs so tranquilly do,
Aloft in the depths of ineffable blue:--
In painless, delicious half consciousness brood,--
No duties to cumber, no claims to intrude,--
Receptive as childhood, from trouble as free,
And feel it is bliss enough simply, to be!

For Alice,--what pencil can picture her joy,--
So perfect, so thankful, so free from annoy,
As her lips press the lotus-bound chalice, and drain
That exquisite blessedness born out of pain!
Oh! not in her maidenhood, blushing and sweet,
When Douglass first poured out his love at her feet;
And not when a shrinking and beautiful bride,
With worshipping fondness she clung to his side;
And not in those holiest moments of life,
When first she was held to his heart, as his wife;
And never in motherhood's earliest bliss,
Had she tasted a happiness rounded like this!

And Douglass, safe sheltered from war's rude alarms,
Finds Eden's lost precincts again in her arms:
He hears afar off, in the distance, the roar
And the lash of the billows that break on the shore
Of his isle of enchantment,--his haven of rest,--
And rapturous languor steals over his breast.

He bathes in the sunlight of Alice's smiles;
He wraps himself round with love's magi