An opportunity of exchange soon occurring, he returned to his chief; and there was no name more dreaded and hated, except that of Tarleton himself, in the latter part of the war, until his career of violence was cut short, with that of many of his comrades, by Morgan's mounted riflemen, at the battle of the Cowpens. The younger Edwards returned with his brave associates, and after the war, the family circle once more united, enjoyed that happiness, the universal fruit of peril and danger firmly met and gallantly overcome.
Our friend Juba flourished for many a long year, in undiminished warm-heartedness to the last; and when time had powdered his head, and deadened the ebony lustre of his hue, he would tell of the perils of his youth, among which the above made no small figure.
Maria Edwards, the beautiful and true-hearted, met with one who appreciated her; and the bliss of a long life was enhanced by the recollections of her early sufferings in the backwoods.
A. H.
[THE SOUL.]
Our thoughts are boundless, though our frames are frail,
Our souls immortal, though our limbs decay;
Though darkened in this poor life by a veil
Of suffering, dying matter, we shall play
In truth's eternal sunbeams; on the way
To heaven's high capitol our car shall roll;
The temple of the power whom all obey,
That is the mark we tend to, for the soul
Can take no lower flight, and seek no meaner goal.
I feel it—though the flesh is weak, I feel
The spirit has its energies untamed
By all its fatal wanderings; time may heal
The wounds which it has suffered; folly claimed
Too large a portion of its youth; ashamed
Of those low pleasures, it would leap and fly,
And soar on wings of lightning, like the famed
Elijah, when the chariot rushing by,
Bore him, with steeds of fire, triumphant to the sky.
We are as barks afloat upon the sea,
Helmless and oarless, when the light has fled,
The spirit, whose strong influence can free
The drowsy soul, that slumbers in the dead,
Cold night of moral darkness; from the bed
Of sloth he rouses at her sacred call,
And kindling in the blaze around him shed,
Rends with strong effort sin's debasing thrall.
And gives to God his strength, his heart, his mind, his all.
Our home is not on earth; although we sleep
And sink in seeming death awhile, yet then
The awakening voice speaks loudly, and we leap
To life, and energy, and light, again;
We cannot slumber always in the den
Of sense and selfishness; the day will break,
Ere we for ever leave the haunts of men;
Even at the parting hour, the soul will wake,
Nor, like a senseless brute, its unknown journey take.