of a conqueror kindling his eye,
His silvery voice rang aloft through the roar
Of the musketry poured from the opposite shore:
--'Remember the Valley!--remember your wives!
And on to your duty, boys!--on--with your lives!'

"He turned, and he paused, as he uttered the call--
Then reeled in his seat, and fell,--pierced by a ball.

"He lives and he breathes yet:--the surgeons declare,
That the balance is trembling 'twixt hope and despair.
In his blanket he lies, on the hospital floor,--
So calm, you might deem all his agony o'er;
And here, as I write, on his face I can see
An expression whose radiance is startling to me.
His faith is sublime:--he relinquishes life,
And craves but one blessing,--_to look on his wife!_"

The Chaplain's recital is ended:--no word
From Alice's white, breathless lips has been heard;
Till, rousing herself from her passionless woe,
She simply and quietly says--"I will go."

There are moments of anguish so deadly, so deep--
That numbness seems over the senses to creep,
With interposition, whose timely relief,
Is an anodyne-draught to the madness of grief.
Such mercy is meted to Alice;--her eye
That sees as it saw not, is vacant and dry:
The billows' wild fury sweeps over her soul,
And she bends to the rush with a passive control.

Through the dusk of the night--through the glare of the day,
She urges, unconscious, her desolate way:
One image is ever her vision before,
--That blanketed form on the hospital floor!

Her journey is ended; and yonder she sees
The spot where _he_ lies, looming white through the trees:
Her torpor dissolves with a shuddering start,
And a terrible agony clutches her heart.

The Chaplain advances to meet her:--he draws
Her silently onward;--no question--no pause--
Her finger she lays on her lip;--if she spake,
She knows that the spell that upholds her, would break.

She has strength to go forward; they enter the door,--
And there, on the crowded and blood-tainted floor,
Close wrapped in his blanket, lies Douglass:--his brow
Wore never a look so seraphic as now!
She stretches her arms the dear form to enfold,--
God help her!..., she shrieks ..., it is silent and cold!

X.

"Break, my heart, and ease this pain--
Cease to throb, thou tortured brain;
Let me die,--