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How the winters are drifting like flakes of snow,

With the summers like buds between;

And the years in their sheaves-how they come and they go
On the river's breast, with its ebb and its flow,
As it glides in the shadow and sheen!

There's a magical isle up the River of Time,
Where the softest of airs are playing;
There's a cloudless sky and a tropical clime,
There's a song as sweet as a vesper chime-
And the Junes with the roses are straying.

And the name of the isle is the Long Ago,
And we bury our treasures there;
There are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow;
There are heaps of dust—Oh, we loved them so!
There are trinkets and tresses of hair.

There's a fragment of song that nobody sings,
And part of an infant's prayer;

There's a lute unswept and a harp without strings,
There are broken vows and pieces of rings,

And the fragrance she used to wear.

There are hands that are waved when the fairy shore
By the mirage is lifted in air,

And we sometimes hear through the turbulent roar
Sweet voices we heard in the days gone before,
When the wind down the river is fair.

Oh, remembered for aye be that beautiful isle
All the day of our life until night,

And when evening comes with her beautiful smile,
And our eyes are closing to slumber awhile,
May that "Greenwood" of souls be in sight!

THE JACKET OF GRAY

By MRS. CAROLINE A. BALL

[The author of these popular lines was a native of South Carolina. Her poem was first published in 'The Jacket of Gray, and Other Fugitive Poems,' Charleston, 1866.]

Fold it up carefully, lay it aside;

Tenderly touch it, look on it with pride;
For dear must it be to our hearts evermore,
The jacket of gray our loved soldier-boy wore.

Can we ever forget when he joined the brave band
That rose in defence of our dear southern land,
And in his bright youth hurried on to the fray,
How proudly he donned it-the jacket of gray?

His fond mother blessed him, and looked up above,
Commending to Heaven the child of her love;
What anguish was hers mortal tongue can not say;
When he passed from her sight in the jacket of gray.

Months passed, and war's thunders rolled over the land,
Unsheathed was the sword, and lighted the brand;
We heard in the distance the sounds of the fray,
And prayed for our boy in the jacket of gray.

Ah vain, all in vain were our prayers and our tears,
The glad shout of victory rang in our ears;
But our treasured one on the red battle-field lay,
While the life-blood oozed out on the jacket of gray.

His young comrades found him and tenderly bore
The cold lifeless form to his home by the shore;
Oh, dark were our hearts on that terrible day,
When we saw our dead boy in the jacket of gray.

Ah! spotted and tattered and stained now with gore,
Was the garment which once he so proudly wore;
We bitterly wept as we took it away,

And replaced with death's white robe the jacket of gray.

!

We laid him to rest in his cold narrow bed,
And graved on the marble we placed o'er his head,
As the proudest tribute our sad hearts could pay---
"He never disgraced the jacket of gray."

Then fold it up carefully, lay it aside,
Tenderly touch it, look on it with pride;
For dear must it be to our hearts evermore,

The jacket of gray our loved soldier-boy wore.

A KENTUCKIAN KNEELS TO NONE BUT GOD

By MRS. MORGAN L. BETTS

[Colonel William Logan Crittenden, of Kentucky, was executed by the Cubans, August 16, 1851. As the leader of his band he was shot first, but refused to kneel, saying, "A Kentuckian kneels to none except his God, and always dies facing the enemy." Mrs. Betts's lines were first published in The Maysville Flag, of Maysville, Kentucky. They have been republished in Collins's 'History of Kentucky' (1882), Mrs. Fannie Porter Dickey's 'Blades o' Bluegrass' (1892), A. C. Quisenberry's 'Lopez's Expedition to Cuba, 1850-1851' (1906), and John Wilson Townsend's 'Kentuckians in History and Literature' (1907). "Although not the best poem of this forgotten Kentucky singer," says Mr. Townsend, “it is the most popular one, and upon it her fame will rest."]

Ah! tyrants forge your chains at will-
Nay! gall this flesh of mine:

Yet, thought is free, unfettered still,

And will not yield to thine!

Take, take the life that Heaven gave,

And let my heart's blood stain thy sod.

But know ye not Kentucky's brave

Will kneel to none but God?

You've quenched fair freedom's sunny light,

Her music tones have stilled,

And with a deep and darkened blight,

The trusting heart have filled!

Then do you think that I will kneel
Where such as you have trod?

Nay! point your cold and threatening steel-
I'll kneel to none but God.

As summer breezes lightly rest

Upon a quiet river,

And gently on its sleeping breast

The moonbeams softly quiver

Sweet thoughts of home light up my brow
When goaded with the rod;

Yet, these cannot unman me now-
I'll kneel to none but God.

And tho' a sad and mournful tone

Is coldly sweeping by ;

And dreams of bliss forever flown
Have dimmed with tears mine eye-
Yet, mine's a heart unyielding still-
Heap on my breast the clod;
My soaring spirit scorns thy will-
I'll kneel to none but God.

LAFAYETTE

By DOLLY MADISON

[This sonnet has been recently discovered. It is reproduced in Burton Egbert Stevenson's 'Poems of American History.' Boston, 1908.]

Born, nurtured, wedded, prized, within the pale
Of peers and princes, high in camp-at court-
He hears, in joyous youth, a wild report,
Swelling the murmurs of the Western gale,
Of a young people struggling to be free!

Straight quitting all, across the wave he flies,

Aids with his sword, wealth, blood, the high emprize!
And shares the glories of its victory.

Then comes for fifty years a high romance
Of toils, reverses, sufferings, in the cause
Of man and justice, liberty and France,
Crowned, at the last, with hope and wide applause.
Champion of Freedom! Well thy race was run!
All time shall hail thee, Europe's noblest Son!

LORENA

[The author of this song was not a Southerner, but few songs are more intimately associated with Confederate camp life. See the history of "Lorena" in Bob Taylor's Magazine, June, 1906.]

The years creep slowly by, Lorena;

The snow is on the grass again;
The sun's low down the sky, Lorena;

The frost gleams where the flowers have been.

But the heart throbs on as warmly now

As when the summer days were nigh;
Oh! the sun can never dip so low
Adown affection's cloudless sky.

A hundred months have passed, Lorena,
Since last I held that hand in mine,
And felt the pulse beat fast, Lorena,

Though mine beat faster far than thine,
A hundred months-'twas flowery May,
When up the hilly slope we climbed,
To watch the dying of the day

And hear the distant church bells chimed.

We loved each other then, Lorena,
More than we ever dared to tell;
And what we might have been, Lorena,
Had but our loving prospered well!
But then, 'tis past; the years have gone,

I'll not call up their shadowy forms;

I'll say to them, Lost years, sleep on,
Sleep on, nor heed life's pelting storms.

The story of the past, Lorena,

Alas! I care not to repeat;

They touched some tender chords, Lorena,
They lived, but only lived to cheat.

I would not cause e'en one regret

To rankle in your bosom now"For if we try we may forget,'

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Were words of thine long years ago.

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