Across the clover, and through the wheat,
With resolute heart and purpose grim,
Though cold was the dew on his hurrying feet,
And the blind bat's flitting startled him.
Thrice since then had the lanes been white,
And the orchards sweet with apple-bloom;
And now, when the cows came back at night,
The feeble father drove them home.
For news had come to the lonely farm
That three were lying where two had lain;
And the old man's tremulous, palsied arm
Could never lean on a son's again.
The summer day grew cold and late.
He went for the cows when the work was done;
But down the lane, as he opened the gate,
He saw them coming, one by one,—
Brindle, Ebony, Speckle, and Bess,
Shaking their horns in the evening wind;
Cropping the buttercups out of the grass,—
But who was it following close behind?
Loosely swung in the idle air
The empty sleeve of army blue;
And worn and pale, from the crisping hair,
Looked out a face that the father knew.
For Southern prisons will sometimes yawn,
And yield their dead unto life again;
And the day that comes with a cloudy dawn
In golden glory at last may wane.
The great tears sprang to their meeting eyes;
For the heart must speak when the lips are dumb;
And under the silent evening skies,
Together they followed the cattle home.
Kate Putnam Osgood.
On July 21, 1865, services were held at Cambridge, Mass., in commemoration of the three hundredth anniversary of Harvard College. Addresses were made by General Meade and General Devens, and an ode written for the occasion was read by James Russell Lowell. This ode, perhaps the greatest ever delivered in America, forms a fitting close to the history of the Civil War.