Or warm with tears his icy breast;
To treasure up his last command,
And bear it to his native land.
It may one pulse of joy impart
To a fond mother's bleeding heart;
Or for a moment it may dry
The tear-drop in the widow's eye.
Vain hope, away! The widow ne'er
Her warrior's dying wish shall hear.
The passing zephyr bears no sigh,
No wounded warrior meets the eye--
Death is his sleep by Erie's wave,
Of Raisin's snow we heap his grave!
How many hopes lie murdered here--
The mother's joy, the father's pride,
The country's boast, the foeman's fear,
In wilder'd havoc, side by side.
Lend me, thou silent queen of night,
Lend me awhile thy waning light,
That I may see each well-loved form,
That sunk beneath the morning storm.

These lines are introductory to what may be considered a succession of
epitaphs on the personal friends whose bodies he found upon the field.
It would extend the extract too far to insert them. We can only add
the close of the poem, where he takes leave of a group of his young
comrades in Hart's company, who had fallen together.

And here I see that youthful band,
That loved to move at Hart's command;
I saw them for the battle dressed,
And still where danger thickest pressed,
I marked their crimson plumage wave.
How many filled this bloody grave!
Their pillow and their winding-sheet
The virgin snow--a shroud most meet!
But wherefore do I linger here?
Why drop the unavailing tear?
Where'er I turn, some youthful form,
Like floweret broken by the storm,
Appeals to me in sad array,
And bids me yet a moment stay.
Till I could fondly lay me down
And sleep with him on the cold, cold ground.
For thee, thou dread and solemn plain,
I ne'er shall look on thee again;
And Spring, with her effacing showers,
Shall come, and Summer's mantling flowers;
And each succeeding Winter throw
On thy red breast new robes of snow;
Yet I will wear thee in my heart,
All dark and gory as thou art.

Shortly after his return from Canada. Ensign Butler was promoted to a
captaincy in the regiment to which he belonged. But as this promotion
was irregular, being made over the heads of senior officers in that
regiment, a captaincy was given him in the 44th, a new raised
regiment. When free from parole, by exchange, in 1814, he instantly
entere