"That girl has smiled", the Colonel thinks, "but on whom'? Who can tell?"
"It is the bearer of the flag, on whom her favor fell",
Exclaims the Captain, who then adds, "Great Heavens! worse than this,
She has not only smiled, but now she really throws a kiss!"

The Colonel, somewhat bent with years, sits up and swells his chest;
"A charming girl" a sergeant cries, and tries to look his best;
Each soldier, if a comrade laughs, a rival seems to fear;
The chief of a battalion looks, and makes his charger rear.
While several soldiers thus assume an air of martial pride,
The color-bearer, whom the band has quite electrified,
Caresses with a trembling hand the down upon his lip,
In doing which he rashly lets the tattered banner dip.
But she has seen within its folds, thus torn with shell and shot,
The soul of one she dearly loved, who, dead at Gravelotte,
Returned no more, but sleeps to-day within an unknown grave ...
The maiden's kiss was for the Flag, the death-shroud of the brave.

(Translated from the poem by Jean Aicard, entitled "Le Baiser au Drapeau".)

EMILY'S GRAVE

Idly one day in a foreign town
In a churchyard's shade I sat me down
By the side of a little cross of stone
On which was a woman's name alone.
A cypress whispered in my ear
That all was now neglected here;
"Emily's Grave" was all I read;
Nothing more on the cross was said;
Neither a name, nor Bible verse,
Nor date relieved the inscription terse,--
"Emily's Grave".
So strange this seemed, my blood turned cold
At thought of a tragedy never told.
The flowers, the grass, and the humming bees
Were blithe and gay in the sun and breeze,
Yet no kind hand had ever strewn
Sweet flowers, where only weeds had grown,
And nothing brightened the lonely mound
Whose edge was lost in the trodden ground.
At length to the churchyard gate I went,
And asked of a woman old and bent,
"Who was the girl, whose cross of stone
Bears nothing save these words alone,--
'Emily's Grave'?"
"Alas!" she answered, "many a year
Hath passed since I beheld her bier;
She was young, and came from a humble nest,
And credulous too, like all the rest;
So a stranger met her here one day
And caught her in his net straightway.
He said he was rich, and she should shine
Like a queen in his castle by the Rhine,
And, winning her love, he took her hence
To where she found it was all pretence.
He had basely lied to the simple maid,
And, wearying soon of a girl betrayed,
Abandone