y and eyes that strain
Deep through the dim suspected wood
Where the Rapidan rolls amain.

_The Indian has passed away,
But creeping comes another--
Deadlier far. Picket,
Take heed--take heed of thy brother!_

From a wood-hung height, an outpost lone,
Crowned with a woodman's fort,
The sentinel looks on a land of dole,
Like Paran, all amort.
Black chimneys, gigantic in moor-like wastes,
The scowl of the clouded sky retort;
The hearth is a houseless stone again--
Ah! where shall the people be sought?

_Since the venom such blastment deals,
The south should have paused, and thrice,
Ere with heat of her hate she hatched
The egg with the cockatrice._

A path down the mountain winds to the glade
Where the dead of the Moonlight Fight lie low;
A hand reaches out of the thin-laid mould
As begging help which none can bestow.
But the field-mouse small and busy ant
Heap their hillocks, to hide if they may the woe:
By the bubbling spring lies the rusted canteen,
And the drum which the drummer-boy dying let go.

_Dust to dust, and blood for blood--
Passion and pangs! Has Time
Gone back? or is this the Age
Of the world's great Prime?_

The wagon mired and cannon dragged
Have trenched their scar; the plain
Tramped like the cindery beach of the damned--
A site for the city of Cain.
And stumps of forests for dreary leagues
Like a massacre show. The armies have lain
By fires where gums and balms did burn,
And the seeds of Summer's reign.

_Where are the birds and boys?
Who shall go chestnutting when
October returns? The nuts--
O, long ere they grow again._

They snug their huts with the chapel-pews,
In court-houses stable their steeds--
Kindle their fires with indentures and bonds,
And old Lord Fairfax's parchment deeds;
And Virginian gentlemen's libraries old--
Books which only the scholar heeds--
Are flung to his kennel. It is ravage and range,
And gardens are left to weeds.

_Turned adrift into war
Man runs wild on the plain,
Like the jennets let loose
On the Pampas--zebras again._

Like the Pleiads dim, see the tents through the storm--
Aloft by the hill-side hamlet's graves,
On a head-stone used for a hearth-stone there
The water is bubbling for punch for our braves.
What if the night