Oh thou! whoe'er thou art that reads this page,
Learn here a lesson of high, holy faith,
For all throughout our earthly pilgrimage,
We hold a tryst with death.
XIV.
Not in the battle-field's tumultuous strife,
Not in the hour when vanquished foemen fly,
Not in the midst of bright and happy life,
Is it most hard to die.
XV.
Greater the guerdon, holier the prize,
Of him who trusts, and waits in lowly mood;
Oh! learn how high, how holy courage lies
In patient fortitude.
Charleston.
By Henry Timrod.
Calm as that second summer which precedes
The first fall of the snow,
In the broad sunlight of heroic deeds,
The city bides the foe.
As yet, behind their ramparts, stern and proud,
Her bolted thunders sleep--
Dark Sumter, like a battlemented cloud,
Looms o'er the solemn deep.
No Calpe frowns from lofty cliff or scaur
To guard the holy strand;
But Moultrie holds in leash her dogs of war,
Above the level sand.