H. T. T.
For the Southern Literary Messenger.
THE PASSAGE OF THE BERESINA.
"The moan of mortal agony which arose from the despairing multitude became at this crisis for a moment so universal, that it rose shrilly audible over the voice of the elements and the thunders of war, above the wild whistling of the tempest and the sustained and redoubled hourras of the Cossacks. The witness from whom we have this information, declares that the sound was in his ears for many weeks. This dreadful scene continued till dark, many being forced into the icy river, some throwing themselves in, betwixt absolute despair and the faint hope of gaining the opposite bank by swimming, some getting across only to die of cold and exhaustion."—Scott's Napoleon, Vol. II. Page 385.
| What scene is here? The dying moan, the wailing cry Come on the gusty blast that speeds so swiftly by; The river rolls heavy as it struggles with dead, Who writhe in their blood ere the spirit hath fled— And chafed by the winds in the wrath of the storm, Its red clotted waters flow tortured and warm. Thousands lie here; kindred and aliens in race, They are rigid and fixed in death's cold embrace; They clench and they cling in the last dying grasp, And the living, the dead, reluctantly clasp: Or, fearing a friend in his last cold embrace, They spurn him beneath to his dark dreary place. A many-voiced moan now saddens the air, Whose tones are all blent with wild curses and prayer; And the deep hollow moan that wails o'er the flood, As spirits pass away in storm and in blood. In the sad welkin tremble heart-rending shrieks, So piercing, that startled, the deep echo speaks. There's mirth that's of madness, one laughs in his fear, And prayer thrills in tones of the wildest despair; And the deep solemn curse from the blasphemer stern, Who weeps not, who wails not, tho' his dying soul burn. Oh spirits pass away so sad in their strife, That the living still cling more closely to life: With unearthliest cries, grim phantasied shapes Brood o'er the senses ere the spirit escapes; On the wings of the wind how swift speeds the blast, With pinions all viewless it fleets as the past;— Oh say, does it bear the spirits that have fled, In the last bitter strife, ere the dying be dead? To the last dying sense comes a vision more dread, For Death flaps his wings o'er the fields of the dead: His deep hollow tones called away and away Spirits immortal, disengaged from their clay; And rearing aloft his deep sable plume, On wings of the wind rose in shadow and gloom, Still bearing them on with invisible trace, As he swept the broad fields of infinite space— Whilst Terror, all wild in his deep, horrid lair, Made sad with his moans the invisible air. The night wind sighs drear, in its last dying breath; The clouds fleet away, like the shadows of death, From the face of the moon, whose sepulch'red light Steals softly upon the dark bosom of night,— As the last smile of hope, ere the spirit hath fled, Lingers tranquil and bright o'er the face of the dead. |
ALPHA.
The lines which follow ought to be preserved in a more permanent form than the columns of a newspaper. They were written and published before Mr. Johnston's lamentable death. It will be recollected that he perished by the explosion of a steamboat, ascending the Red River.
After the above was penned, the melancholy intelligence reached us of Mr. Davis's death. Patriotism will mourn his loss, and the Columbian Muse hang a garland over his tomb.