Lost loved ones met and clasped me here;
I looked into their eyes serene,
They spake to me, and I did hear
As I were walking in a dream.
But even then a wind arose
That swept the morning mists away,
And showed, unfolding like a rose,
The bright flower of the perfect day:
And fading—faded like a cloud,
The hands I clasped, like wreaths of smoke,
While chanticleer crowed shrill and loud,
And wan and 'wildered I awoke.
THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862.
Under the orchard boughs,
That drop red leaves like coals into the grass.
The golden arrows of the sunset fall;
And on the vine-hung wall
Great purple clusters in delicious drowse,
Beakers of chrysolite and amethyst,
Yet by the sun unkissed,
Lean down to all the wooing lips that pass,
Brimful of red, red wine
Sweet as brown peasants glean along the castled Rhine
All sights and sounds are of the Autumn weather;
The urchin rocking in the trees
Shakes silver laughter with the apples down,—
And wading to the knees
Among the stubble and the husks so brown,
The oxen keeping every patient step together,
Bring in the creaking wain,
High-piled with yellow maize and sheaves of rustling grain.
While in the mill, with ceaseless whirr and drone,
With moss and lichens to the roof o'ergrown
An undertone to every other sound,
The blind old horse goes round
Gathered along the farm-house eaves
In noisy congress, see the swallows sit,
Or whirling in mid air like autumn leaves,
In airy wheels they flit.
Bright rovers of all summer skies,
I follow them with wistful eyes
To-morrow's sunset they will be
A thousand leagues by land and sea
Beyond this wintry hemisphere
Heaven gathers round their joyous wings
The sunlight of perpetual springs,
Soft airs and fragrant blossomings
Through all the glad round year.
I hear as though I did not hear,
Along the upland fields remote,
The plough-boy's whistle, silver clear:
For hark the herds-man's graver note,
Who hums beneath the orchard boughs,
The ballad of that grand old man,
Who marshalled freedom's battle van,
And fell,—no laurel round his brows.
To-day the hero-martyr's grave
Is shaken by the armed tread
Of patriotic soldiers o'er his head
Not by the footsteps of one slave!
So grows the work that he began,
Wrought out in slow and toilsome ways,
Yet ever building through the days,
A grander heritage for man.