Written in Exile.
By Annie Chambers Ketchum.
Friend of the thoughtful mind and gentle heart!
Beneath the citron-tree--
Deep calling to my soul's profounder deep--
I hear the Mexique Sea.
While through the night rides in the spectral surf
Along the spectral sands,
And all the air vibrates, as if from harps
Touched by phantasmal hands.
Bright in the moon the red pomegranate flowers
Lean to the Yucca's bells,
While with her chrism of dew, sad Midnight fills
The milk-white asphodels.
Watching all night--as I have done before--
I count the stars that set,
Each writing on my soul some memory deep
Of Pleasure or Regret;
Till, wild with heart-break, toward the East I turn,
Waiting for dawn of day;--
And chanting sea, and asphodel and star
Are faded, all, away.
Only within my trembling, trembling hands--
Brought unto me by thee--
I clasp these beautiful and fragile things,
Bright sea-weeds from the sea,
Fair bloom the flowers beneath these Northern skies,
Pure shine the stars by night,
And grandly sing the grand Atlantic waves
In thunder-throated might;
But, as the sea-shell in her chambers keeps
The murmur of the sea,
So the deep-echoing memories of my home
Will not depart from me.
Prone on the page they lie, these gentle things!
As I have seen them cast
Like a drowned woman's hair, along the beach,
When storms were over-past;
Prone, like mine own affections, cast ashore
In Battle's storm and blight;
Would they had died, like sea-weeds! Pray forgive me
But I must weep to-night.
Tell me again, of Summer fields made fair
By Spring's precursing plough;
Of joyful reapers, gathering tear-sown harvests--
Talk to me,--will you?--now!
The Salkehatchie.
By Emily J. Moore.
Written when a garrison, at or near Salkehatchie Bridge, were threatening a raid up in the Fork of Big and Little Salkehatchie.
The crystal streams, the pearly streams,
The streams in sunbeams flashing,
The murm'ring streams, the gentle streams,
The streams down mountains dashing,
Have been the theme
Of poets' dream,
And, in wild witching story,
Have been renowned for love's fond scenes,
Or some great deed of glory.
The Rhine, the Tiber, Ayr, and Tweed,
The Arno, silver-flowing,
The Hudson, Charles, Potomac, Dan,
With poesy are glowing;
But I would praise
In artless lays,
A stream which well may match ye,
Though dark its waters glide along--
The swampy Salkehatchie.
'Tis not the beauty of its stream,
Which makes it so deserving
Of honor at the Muses' hands,
But 'tis the use it's serving,
And 'gainst a raid,
We hope its aid
Will ever prove efficient,
Its fords remain still overflowed,
In water ne'er deficient.
If Vandal bands are held in check,
Their crossing thus prevented,
And we are spared the ravage wild
Their malice has invented,
Then we may well
In numbers tell
No other stream can match ye,
And grateful we shall ever be
To swampy Salkehatchie.