e
Who lead, and nobly save,
But no knowledge in the grave
Where the nameless followers sleep.

IN THE PRISON PEN
1864

Listless he eyes the palisades
And sentries in the glare;
'Tis barren as a pelican-beach
But his world is ended there.

Nothing to do; and vacant hands
Bring on the idiot-pain;
He tries to think--to recollect,
But the blur is on his brain.

Around him swarm the plaining ghosts
Like those on Virgil's shore--
A wilderness of faces dim,
And pale ones gashed and hoar.

A smiting sun. No shed, no tree;
He totters to his lair--
A den that sick hands dug in earth
Ere famine wasted there,

Or, dropping in his place, he swoons,
Walled in by throngs that press,
Till forth from the throngs they bear
him dead--
Dead in his meagreness.

THE COLLEGE COLONEL

He rides at their head;
A crutch by his saddle just slants in view,
One slung arm is in splints, you see,
Yet he guides his strong steed--how
coldly too.

He brings his regiment home--
Not as they filed two years before,
But a remnant half-tattered, and battered,
and worn,
Like castaway sailors, who--stunned
By the surf's loud roar,
Their mates dragged back and seen no
more--
Again and again breast the surge,
And at last crawl, spent, to shore.

A still rigidity and pale--
An Indian aloofness lones his brow;
He has lived a thousand years
Compressed in battle's pains and prayers,
Marches and watches slow.

There are welcoming shouts, and flags;
Old men off hat to the Boy,
Wreaths from gay balconies fall at his feet,
But to _him_--there comes alloy.

It is not that a leg is lost,
It is not that an arm is maimed,
It is not that the fever has racked--
Self he has long disclaimed.

But all through the Seven Days' Fight,
And deep in the Wilderness grim,
And in the field-hospital tent,
And Petersburg crater, and dim
Lean brooding in Libby, there came--
Ah heaven!--what _truth_ to him.

THE MARTYR
_Indicative of the passion of the people on the
15th of April, 1865_

Goon Friday was the day
Of the prodigy and crime,
When they killed him in his pity,
When they killed him in his prime
Of clemency and calm--
When with yearning he was filled
To redeem the evil-willed,
And, though conqueror, be kind;
But they killed him in his kindness,
In their madness and their blindness,
And they killed him from behind.

There