Five of the rebels, like satellites round her,
Burned in her orbit of splendor and fear,
One, like the pleiad of mystical story,

Shot, terror-stricken, beyond her dread sphere.

We who are waiting, with crowns for the victors,
Though we should offer the wealth of our store,
Load the Varuna from deck down to keelson,

Still would be niggard, such tribute to pour
On courage so boundless. It beggars possession,
It knocks for just payment at heaven's bright door!

Cherish the heroes who fought the Varuna;
Treat them as kings if they honor your way;
Succor and comfort the sick and the wounded;
Oh, for the dead let us all kneel to pray!

Ex. CXCIII.—THANKSGIVING-EVE, 1862.

SLOW across the blue Potomac fades the dim November light, And the darkness, like a mantle, folds the tented field from sight;

Through the shadowed wood beside me breaks the wind with quivering moan,

Floating, sighing, falling, dying, as I hold my watch alone.

Forward, backward, stern and fearless, till the moonbeam's dancing ray

Breaks in many a gleaming arrow from my bayonet's point away;

So I pace the picket lonely; but, apart from mortal sight, Watch I'm keeping with the sleeping loved ones far away to-night.

On the morrow comes Thanksgiving, when, from households far and wide,

Round their homes the children gather-seek once more the old fireside;

Fill once more the vacant places, that they left so long ago, Self-relying, proudly trying all life's unknown joy and woe.

THE PICKET GUARD.

291

On the morrow comes Thanksgiving, not as long ago it came, Bright, without a shade of sorrow lingering on its good old

name;

War has waved his crimson banner, and beneath its blood stains rest

All his glory, dim and gory, laid on many a lifeless breast.

Wife and child, and aged mother, wake at morn to bend the knee,

And around the hearth-stone glowing, supplicate their God

for me;

Near my vacant chair they gather, blending tears amid their

prayers

God will hear them, and anear them will my spirit kneel with theirs.

Nor is darkness all around us; we can thank our God for might

For the strength which he has given, still to struggle for the right;

For the soul so grandly beating in the nation's onward way, For the spirit we inherit in this new Thanksgiving day!

Still the blue Potomac ripples like a silver thread below, And amid the sullen darkness rises high the camp-fire's glow; So I pace the picket lonely, while, apart from mortal sight, Watch I'm keeping with the sleeping loved ones there at home to-night.

Ex. CXCIV.-THE PICKET GUARD.

"ALL quiet along the Potomac," they say,
"Except now and then a stray picket
Is shot, as he walks on his beat, to and fro,
By a rifleman off in the thicket.

"Tis nothing-a private or two, now and then,
Will not count in the news of the battle;
Not an officer lost-only one of the men,
Moaning out, all alone, the death-rattle."

All quiet along the Potomac to-night,

Where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming;
Their tents in the rays of the clear autumn moon,
Or the light of the watchfires are gleaming.
A tremulous sigh, as the gentle night-wind
Through the forest-leaves softly is creeping;
While stars up above, with their glittering eyes,
Keep guard-for the army is sleeping.

There's only the sound of the lone sentry's tread,
As he tramps from the rock to the fountain,
And thinks of the two in the low trundle-bed
Far away in the cot on the mountain.

His musket falls slack--his face, dark and grim,
Grows gentle with memories tender,

As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep-
For their mother, may Heaven defend her!

The moon seems to shine just as brightly as then,
That night, when the love yet unspoken
Leaped up to his lips-when low-murmured vows
Were pledged to be ever unbroken.

Then drawing his sleeve roughly over his eyes,
He dashes off tears that are welling,
And gathers his gun closer up to its place
As if to keep down the heart-swelling.

He passes the fountain, the blasted pine-tree-
The footstep is lagging and weary;

Yet onward he goes, through the broad belt of light,
Toward the shades of the forest so dreary.
Hark! was it night-wind that rustled the leaves?
Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing?
It looked like a rifle-"Ah! Mary, good by!"
And the life-blood is ebbing and plashing.

All quiet along the Potomac to-night,
No sound save the rush of the river;

While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead-
The picket's off duty forever.

ALL FOR OUR COUNTRY.

293

Ex. CXCV.-NO PARTY NOW-ALL FOR OUR COUNTRY.

From an Address read at the Inaugural Meeting of the Loyal National League, in Union Square, New York, on the 11th of April, 1863.

FRANCIS LIEBER.

Ir is just and wise that men engaged in a great and arduous cause should profess anew, from time to time, their faith, and pledge themselves to one another, to stand by their cause to the last extremity, even at the sacrifice of all they have and all that God has given them-their wealth, their blood, and their children's blood. We solemnly pledge all this to our cause, for it is the cause of our country and her noble history, of freedom, and justice, and truth-it is the cause of all we hold dearest on this earth: we profess and pledge this-plainly, broadly, openly in the cheering time of success, and most fervently in the day of trial and

reverses.

We recollect how, two years ago, when reckless arrogance attacked Fort Sumter, the response to that boom of treasonable cannon was read, in our city, in the flag of our country-waving from every steeple and school-house, from City Hall and Court House, from every shop window and market stall, and fluttering in the hand of every child, and on the head-gear of every horse in the busy street. Two years have passed; uncounted sacrifices have been madesacrifices of wealth, of blood, and limb, and life-of friendship and brotherhood, of endeared and hallowed pursuits and sacred ties and still the civil war is raging in bitterness and heart-burning-still we make the same profession, and still we pledge ourselves firmly to hold on to our cause, and persevere in the struggle into which unrighteous men, bewildered by pride, and stimulated by bitter hatred, have plunged us.

We profess ourselves to be loyal citizens of these United States; and by loyalty we mean a candid and loving devotion to the object to which a loyal man—a loyal husband, a loyal friend, a loyal citizen-devotes himself. We eschew the attenuated arguments derived by trifling scholars from meagre etymology. We take the core and substance of this weighty word, and pledge ourselves that we will loyallynot merely outwardly and formally, according to the letter, but frankly, fervently and according to the spirit-adhere to our country, to her institutions, to freedom, and her power,

and to that great institution called the government of our country, founded by our fathers, and loved by their sons, and by all right-minded men, who have become citizens of this land by choice and not by birth-who have wedded this country in the maturity of their age as verily their own. We pledge ourselves as National men devoted to the Nationality of this great people. No government can wholly dispense with loyalty, except the fiercest despotism ruling by naked intimidation; but a republic stands in greater need of it than any other government, and most of all a republic beset by open rebellion and insidious treason. Loyalty is pre-eminently a civic virtue in a free country. It is patriotism cast in the graceful mould of candid devotion to the harmless government of an unshackled nation.

In pledging ourselves thus, we know of no party. Parties are unavoidable in free countries, and may be useful if they acknowledge the country far above themselves, and remain within the sanctity of the fundamental law which protects the enjoyment of liberty prepared for all within its sacred domain. But Party has no meaning in far the greater number of the highest and the common relations of human life. When we are ailing, we do not take medicine by party prescription. We do not build ships by party measurement; we do not pray for our daily bread by party distinctions; we do not take our chosen ones to our bosoms by party demarcations, nor do we eat or drink, sleep or wake, as partisans. We do not enjoy the flowers of spring, nor do we harvest the grain, by party lines. We do not incur punishments for infractions of the commandments according to party creeds. We do not pursue truth, or cultivate science, by party dogmas; and we do not, we must not, love and defend our country and our liberty, dear to us as part and portion of our very selves, according to party rules. Woe to him who does. When a house is on fire, and a mother with her child cries for help at the window above, shall the firemen at the engine be allowed to trifle away the precious time in party bickerings, or is then the only word-"Water! pump away; up with the ladder!"

Let us not be like the Byzantines, those wretches who quarrelled about contemptible party refinements, theological though they were, while the truculent Mussulman was steadily drawing nearer--nay, some of whom would even go to the lord of the crescent, and with a craven heart would beg for a pittance of the spoil, so that they would be spared,