The rain is plashing on my sill,
But all the winds of Heaven are still;
And so it falls with that dull sound
Which thrills us in the church-yard ground,
When the first spadeful drops like lead
Upon the coffin of the dead.
Beyond my streaming window-pane,
I cannot see the neighboring vane,
Yet from its old familiar tower
The bell comes, muffled, through the shower
What strange and unsuspected link
Of feeling touched, has made me think—
While with a vacant soul and eye
I watch that gray and stony sky—
Of nameless graves on battle-plains
Washed by a single winter's rains,
Where—some beneath Virginian hills,
And some by green Atlantic rills,
Some by the waters of the West—
A myriad unknown heroes rest?
Ah! not the chiefs, who, dying, see
Their flags in front of victory,
Or, at their life-blood's noble cost
Pay for a battle nobly lost,
Claim from their monumental beds
The bitterest tears a nation sheds.
Beneath yon lonely mound—the spot
By all save some fond few, forgot—
Lie the true martyrs of the fight
Which strikes for freedom and for right.
Of them, their patriot zeal and pride,
The lofty faith that with them died,
No grateful page shall farther tell
Than that so many bravely fell;
And we can only dimly guess
What worlds of all this world's distress,
What utter woe, despair, and dearth,
Their fate has brought to many a hearth.
Just such a sky as this should weep
Above them, always, where they sleep;
Yet, haply, at this very hour
Their graves are like a lover's bower;
And Nature's self, with eyes unwet,
Oblivious of the crimson debt
To which she owes her April grace,
Laughs gayly o'er their burial-place.
[Footnote 92: A native of South Carolina. He has a fine poetic sentiment, with much beauty of expression, and is an especial favorite in the South.]
* * * * *
=Susan A. Talley Von Weiss,=[93] about =1830-.=
=417.= THE SEA-SHELL.
Sadly the murmur, stealing
Through the dim windings of the mazy shell,
Seemeth some ocean-mystery concealing
Within its cell.
And ever sadly breathing,
As with the tone of far-off waves at play,
That dreamy murmur through the sea-shell wreathing
Ne'er dies away.
It is no faint replying
Of far-off melodies of wind and wave,
No echo of the ocean billow, sighing
Through gem-lit cave.
It is no dim retaining
Of sounds that through the dim sea-caverns swell
But some lone ocean spirit's sad complaining,
Within that cell.
* * * * *