The terrible grumble and rumble and roar,
Telling the battle was on once more,
And Sheridan twenty miles away.

And wider still those billows of war
Thundered along the horizon's bar,
And louder yet into Winchester rolled
The roar of that red sea uncontrolled,
Making the blood of the listener cold

As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray,
With Sheridan twenty miles away.

But there is a road from Winchester town,
A good, broad highway leading down ;
And there through the flash of the morning light,
A steed as black as the steeds of night,
Was seen to pass as with eagle flight.
As if he knew the terrible need,
He stretched away with the utmost speed;
Hills rose and fell, but his heart was gay,
With Sheridan fifteen miles away.

Under his spurning feet the road
Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed,
And the landscape sped away behind
Like an ocean flying before the wind;

And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace ire,
Swept on with his wild eyes full of fire;
But, lo! he is nearing his heart's desire,
He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray,
With Sheridan only five miles away.

The first that the General saw were the groups
Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops;
What was done, - what to do, a glance told

him both,

And, striking his spurs with a terrible oath,
He dashed down the line mid a storm of huzzas,
And the wave of retreat checked its course there
because

The sight of the master compelled it to pause.
With foam and with dust the black charger was

gray,

By the flash of his eye, and his nostril's play
He seemed to the whole great army to say,
"I have brought you Sheridan all the way
From Winchester, down to save the day!"

Hurrah, hurrah for Sheridan!
Hurrah, hurrah for horse and man!

And when their statues are placed on high,
Under the dome of the Union sky,
The American soldier's Temple of Fame,
There with the glorious General's name
Be it said in letters both bold and bright:
"Here is the steed that saved the day
By carrying Sheridan into the fight,
From Winchester, twenty miles away!"

THOMAS BUCHANAN READ,

THE LITTLE CLOUD.

[Written in 1853-]

As when, on Carmel's sterile steep,
The ancient prophet bowed the knee,
And seven times sent his servant forth
To look toward the distant sea;

There came at last a little cloud,

Scarce larger than the human hand, Spreading and swelling till it broke

In showers on all the herbless land.

And hearts were glad, and shouts went up,
And praise to Israel's mighty God,
As the sear hills grew bright with flowers,
And verdure clothed the valley sod.

Even so our eyes have waited long; But now a little cloud appears, Spreading and swelling as it glides Onward into the coming years.

Bright cloud of Liberty! full soon,

Far stretching from the ocean strand, Thy glorious folds shall spread abroad, Encircling our beloved land.

Like the sweet rain on Judah's hills,

The glorious boon of love shall fall, And our bond millions shall arise, As at an angel's trumpet-call.

Then shall a shout of joy go up,

The wild, glad cry of freedom come
From hearts long crushed by cruel hands,
And songs from lips long sealed and dumb.

And every bondman's chain be broke,
And every soul that moves abroad
In this wide realm shall know and feel
The blessed Liberty of God.

JOHN HOWARD BRYANT.

MARCO BOZZARIS.

[Marco Bozzaris, the Epaminondas of modern Greece, fell in a night attack upon the Turkish camp at Laspi, the site of the ascient Platea, August 20, 1823, and expired in the moment of victory, His last words were: "To die for liberty is a pleasure, and not a pain."}

Ar midnight, in his guarded tent,

The Turk was dreaming of the hour When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent, Should tremble at his power.

In dreams, through camp and court, he bore The trophies of a conqueror;

In dreams his song of triumph heard;

Then wore his monarch's signet-ring,

Then pressed that monarch's throne a king;
As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing,
As Eden's garden bird.

At midnight, in the forest shades,

Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band,
True as the steel of their tried blades,
Heroes in heart and hand.

There had the Persian's thousands stood,
There had the glad earth drunk their blood,

On old Platea's day;

And now there breathed that haunted air
The sons of sires who conquered there,
With arms to strike, and soul to dare,
As quick, as far, as they.

An hour passed on, the Turk awoke :
That bright dream was his last ;
He woke to hear his sentries shriek,
"Toarms they come! the Greek! the Greek!"
He woke to die midst flame, and smoke,
And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke,

And death-shots falling thick and fast
As lightnings from the mountain-cloud ;
And heard, with voice as trumpet loud,
Bozzaris cheer his band:

"Strike- till the last armed foe expires;
Strike for your altars and your fires;
Strike - for the green graves of your sires,
God, and your native land!"

Bleeding at every vein.

His few surviving comrades saw

His smile when rang their proud hurrah,
And the red field was won;
Then saw in death his eyelids close
Calmly, as to a night's repose.
Like flowers at set of sun.

Come to the bridal chamber, death,

Come to the mother's, when she feels, For the first time, her first-born's breath; Come when the blessed seals

That close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke ;

Come in consumption's ghastly form,
The earthquake shock, the ocean storm;
Come when the heart beats high and warm,
With banquet song and dance and wine, -
And thou art terrible; the tear,
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,
And all we know, or dream, or fear
Of agony, are thine.

But to the hero, when his sword

ilas won the battle for the free,

Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word,
And in its hollow tones are heard

The thanks of millions yet to be.
Come when his task of fame is wrought;
Come with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought;
Come in her crowning hour, and then
Thy sunken eye's unearthly light
To him is welcome as the sight

Of sky and stars to prisoned men ;
Thy grasp is welcome as the hand
Of brother in a foreign land;

Thy summons welcome as the cry
That told the Indian isles were nigh
To the world-seeking Genoese,
When the land-wind, from woods of palm,
And orange-groves, and fields of balm,
Blew o'er the Haytian seas.

Bozzaris! with the storied brave

Greece nurtured in her glory's time, Rest thee; there is no prouder grave,

Even in her own proud clime.

She wore no funeral weeds for thee,

Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume, Like torn branch from death's leafless tree, In sorrow's pomp and pageantry,

The heartless luxury of the tomb. But she remembers thee as one Long loved, and for a season gone. For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed, Her marble wrought, her music breathed; For thee she rings the birthday bells; Of thee her babes' first lisping tells; For thine her evening prayer is said At palace couch and cottage bed. Her soldier, closing with the foe, Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow; His plighted maiden, when she fears For him, the joy of her young years, Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears. And she, the mother of thy boys, Though in her eye and faded cheek Is read the grief she will not speak, The memory of her buried joys, And even she who gave thee birth, Will, by her pilgrim-circled hearth, Talk of thy doom without a sigh ; For thou art freedom's now, and fame's, One of the few, the immortal names That were not born to die.

Was Freedom's home or Glory's grave!
Shrine of the mighty! can it be
That this is all remains of thee?
Approach, thou craven, crouching slave;
Say, is not this Thermopyla ?
These waters blue that round you lave,
O servile offspring of the free,
Pronounce what sea, what shore is this?
The gulf, the rock of Salamis !
These scenes, their story not unknown,
Arise and make again your own;
Snatch from the ashes of your sires
The embers of their former fires;
And he who in the strife expires
Will add to theirs a name of fear
That Tyranny shall quake to hear,
And leave his sons a hope, a fame,
They too will rather die than shame;
For Freedom's battle once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft is ever won.
Bear witness, Greece, thy living page,
Attest it, many a deathless age:
While kings, in dusty darkness hid,
Have left a nameless pyramid,
Thy heroes, though the general doom
Have swept the column from their tomb,
A mightier monument command,
The mountains of their native land!
There points thy muse to stranger's eye
The graves of those that cannot die !
"T were long to tell, and sad to trace,
Each step from splendor to disgrace :
Enough, no foreign foe could quell
Thy soul, till from itself it fell;
Yes! self-abasement paved the way
To villain-bonds and despot sway.
What can he tell who treads thy shore?
No legend of thine olden time,

No theme on which the muse might soar,
High as thine own in days of yore,

When man was worthy of thy clime.
The hearts within thy valleys bred,
The fiery souls that might have led
Thy sons to deeds sublime,
Now crawl from cradle to the grave,
Slaves — nay, the bondsmen of a slave,
And callous save to crime.

POLAND.

FROM "THE PLEASURES OF MEMORY."

BYRON.

Is there no hand on high to shield the brave?
Yet, though destruction sweep those lovely plains,
Rise, fellow-men! our country yet remains!
By that dread name, we wave the sword on high,
And swear for her to live with her to die!"
He said, and on the rampart-heights arrayed
His trusty warriors, few, but undismayed;
Firm-paced and slow, a horrid front they form,
Still as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm;
Low murmuring sounds along their banners fly,
Revenge, or death, the watchword and reply;
Then pealed the notes, omnipotent to charm,
And the loud tocsin tolled their last alarm !
In vain, alas! in vain, ye gallant few!
From rank to rank your volleyed thunder flew :-
O, bloodiest picture in the book of Time !
Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime;
Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe,
Strength in her arms, nor mercy in her woe!
Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered

spear,

When we, as we rush to the strangling fight,
Send home to our true-loves a long "Good-night,"
Thou canst hie thee where love is sold,
And buy thy pleasure with paltry gold.
A graceless, worthless wight, etc.

When lance and bullet come whistling by,
And death in a thousand shapes draws nigh,
Thou canst sit at thy cards, and kill
King, queen, and knave with thy spadille.
A graceless, worthless wight, etc.

If on the red field our bell should toll,
Then welcome be death to the patriot's soul.
Thy pampered flesh shall quake at its doom,
And crawl in silk to a hopeless tomb.

A pitiful exit thine shall be;

No German maid shall weep for thee,
No German song shall they sing for thee,
No German goblets shall ring for thee.
Forth in the van,

Man for man,

Swing the battle-sword who can!

ITALY.

And stop her bloody lips, she takes no heed How one clear word would draw an avalanche Of living sons around her, to succeed

The vanished generations. Can she count These oil-eaters, with large, live, mobile mouths Agape for macaroni, in the amount

Of consecrated heroes of her south's

Bright rosary? The pitcher at the fount, The gift of gods, being broken, she much loathes To let the ground-leaves of the place confer A natural bowl. So henceforth she would seem No nation, but the poet's pensioner, With alms from every land of song and dream, While aye her pipers sadly pipe of her, Until their proper breaths, in that extreme Of sighing, split the reed on which they played!

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

A COURT LADY.

I.

CHARLES T. BROOKS.

FROM "CASA GUIDI WINDOWS."

"LESS wretched if less fair." Perhaps a truth Is so far plain in this, - that Italy,

Long trammelled with the purple of her youth Against her age's ripe activity,

Sits still upon her tombs, without death's ruth, But also without life's brave energy.

"Now tell us what is Italy?" men ask : And others answer, "Virgil, Cicero, Catullus, Cæsar." What beside? to task The memory closer, "Why, Boccaccio, Dante, Petrarca,' - and if still the flask Appears to yield its wine by drops too slow, "Angelo, Raffael, Pergolese,"all

Whose strong hearts beat through stone, or charged again

The paints with fire of souls electrical, Or broke up heaven for music. What more then? Why, then, no more. The chaplet's last beads

fall

In naming the last saintship within ken,

And, after that, none prayeth in the land. Alas, this Italy has too long swept Heroic ashes up for hour-glass sand; Of her own past, impassioned nympholept ! Consenting to be nailed here by the hand To the very bay-tree under which she stepped A queen of old, and plucked a leafy branch. And, licensing the world too long indeed To use her broad phylacteries to stanch

purple were dark,

VIII.

In she went at the door, and gazing, from end to end,

"Many and low are the pallets, but each is the place of a friend."

IX.

Up she passed through the wards, and stood at a young man's bed:

XVIII.

On she passed to a Frenchman, his arm carried off by a ball:

Kneeling, . . "O more than my brother! how shall I thank thee for all?

XIX.

"Each of the heroes around us has fought for his land and line,

XV.

wrong not thine.

Only a tear for Venice ? she turned as in passion and loss,

And stooped to his forehead and kissed it, as if she were kissing the cross.

XXIV.

Faint with that strain of heart, she moved on then to another,

Stern and strong in his death. "And dost thou suffer, my brother?"

XXV.

like a girl's,

Young, and pathetic with dying, a deep black

mont lion

"Out of the Pied