grave.
When homeward footing it in the sun
After the weary ride by rail,
The stripling soldiers passed her door,
Wounded perchance, or wan and pale,
She left her household work undone--
Duly the wayside table spread,
With evergreens shaded, to regale
Each travel-spent and grateful one.
So warm her heart--childless--unwed,
Who like a mother comforted.

On the Slain at Chickamauga.

Happy are they and charmed in life
Who through long wars arrive unscarred
At peace. To such the wreath be given,
If they unfalteringly have striven--
In honor, as in limb, unmarred.
Let cheerful praise be rife,
And let them live their years at ease,
Musing on brothers who victorious died--
Loved mates whose memory shall ever please.

And yet mischance is honorable too--
Seeming defeat in conflict justified
Whose end to closing eyes is his from view.
The will, that never can relent--
The aim, survivor of the bafflement,
Make this memorial due.

An uninscribed Monument
on one of the Battle-fields of the Wilderness.

Silence and Solitude may hint
(Whose home is in yon piny wood)
What I, though tableted, could never tell--
The din which here befell,
And striving of the multitude.
The iron cones and spheres of death
Set round me in their rust,
These, too, if just,
Shall speak with more than animated breath.
Thou who beholdest, if thy thought,
Not narrowed down to personal cheer,
Take in the import of the quiet here--
The after-quiet--the calm full fraught;
Thou too wilt silent stand--
Silent as I, and lonesome as the land.

On Sherman's Men
who fell in the Assault of Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia.

They said that Fame her clarion dropped
Because great deeds were done no more--
That even Duty knew no shining ends,
And Glory--'twas a fallen star!
But battle can heroes and bards restore.
Nay, look at Kenesaw:
Perils the mailed ones never knew
Are lightly braved by the ragged coats of blue,
And gentler hearts are bared to deadlier war.

On the Grave
of a young Cavalry Officer killed in the Valley of Virginia.

Beauty and youth, with manners sweet, and friends--
Gold, yet a mind not unenriched had he
Whom here low violets veil from eyes.
But all these gifts transcended be:
His happier fortune in this mound you see.

A Requiem
for Soldiers lost in Ocean Transports.

When, after storms that woodlands rue,
To valleys comes atoning dawn,
The ro