Along the Shore | Page 7

in mercy for our souls' shrift?When we come to our last need.
I forgive you, matchless beauty,?Proudly conscious of your fame,?Loved by many a luckless youngster?Who will ne'er forget your name!
Merry, though so cold of answer,?With a laughing glance of steel,?How your face swept like a banner,?Blushing down the village reel!
As you dance before my vision?On this deadly foreign morn,?Death is charmed into the soothing?Of the love you chose to scorn.
We shall die--our hours are numbered--?As the sunlight dawns serene?Over yonder mountain ridges,?Rimming round this battle scene.
I shall die--few will return, dear;?I shall be of those who stay:?England sent us, but a handful,?Among hordes of heathen clay.
We will show the world how England?Has no dross to spend in war;?When she throws away her soldiers,?They are soldiers to the core.
You will wake to hear the twitter?Of the early sparrow's note:?I shall lie beneath the heavens,?With the death-grip at my throat!
THE LOST BATTLE
To his heart it struck such terror?That he laughed a laugh of scorn,--?The man in the soldier's doublet,?With the sword so bravely worn.
It struck his heart like the frost-wind?To find his comrades fled,?While the battle-field was guarded?By the heroes who lay dead.
He drew his sword in the sunlight,?And called with a long halloo:?"Dead men, there is one living?Shall stay it out with you!"
He raised a ragged standard,?This lonely soul in war,?And called the foe to onset,?With shouts they heard afar.
They galloped swiftly toward him.?The banner floated wide;?It sank; he sank beside it?Upon his sword, and died.
THE OUTGOING RACE.
The mothers wish for no more daughters;?There is no future before them.?They bow their heads and their pride?At the end of the many tribes' journey.
The mothers weep over their children,?Loved and unwelcome together,?Who should have been dreamed, not born,?Since there is no road for the Indian.
The mothers see into the future,?Beyond the end of that Chieftain?Who shall be the last of the race?Which allowed only death to a coward.
The square, cold cheeks, lips firm-set,?The hot, straight glance, and the throat-line,?Held like a stag's on the cliff,?Shall be swept by the night-winds, and vanish!
HIDDEN HISTORY.
I.
There was a maiden in a land?Was buried with all honor fine,?For they said she had dared her pulsing life?To save a silent, holy shrine.
The cannon rode by the church's door,?The men's wild faces flashed in the sun;?The woman had guarded with rifle poised,?While the cassocked priests had run.
Ah, no! To save her pulsing life?The woman like a reindeer turned,?While hostile armies rolled by her in clouds,?And miles of sun and metal burned.
But who should know? For she was dead?Before the leathern curtain's wall,?When came her wide-eyed comrades, and found?Her body and her weapon, all.
II.
There was a woman left to die?Who never told her sacrifice,?But trusted for her crown to God,?As to its value and device.
No land was prouder for her heart,?No word has echoed long her deed,?And where she has lain, the angel flower?Looks like a common weed.
A BALLAD OF THE MIST.
"I love the Lady of Merle," he said.?"She is not for thee!" her suitor cried.?And in the valley the lovers fought?By the salt river's tide.
The braver fell on the dewy sward:?The unloved lover returned once more;?In yellow satin the lady came?And met him at the door.
"Hast thou heard, dark Edith," laughed he grim,?"Poor Hugh hath craved thee many a day??Soon would it have been too late for him?His low-born will to say.
"I struck a blade where lay his heart's love,?And voice for thee have I left him none,?To brag he still seeks thee over the hills?When thou and I are one!"
Fearless across the wide country?Rode the dark Lady Edith of Merle;?She looked at the headlands soft with haze,?And the moor's mists of pearl.
The moon it struggled to see her pass?Through its half-lit veils of driving gray;?But moonbeams were slower than the steed?That Edith rode away.
Oh, what was her guerdon and her haste,?While cried the far screech-owl in the tree,?And to her heart crept its note so lone,?Beating tremulously?
About her a black scarf floated thin,?And over her cheek the mist fell cold,?And shuddered the moon between its rifts?Of dark cloud's silvery fold.
Oh, white fire of the nightly sky?When burns the moon's wonder wide and far,?And every cloud illumed with flame?Engulfs a shaken star!

Bright as comes morning from the hill,?There comes a face to her lover's eyes;?Her love she tells; and he, dying, smiles,--?And smiles yet in the skies.
He is dead, and closer breathe the mists;?He is dead, the owlet moans remote;?He is buried, and the moon draws near,?To gaze and hide and float.
Fearless within the churchyard's spell?The white-browed lady doth stand and sigh;?She loves the mist, and the grave, and the moon,?And the owl's quivering cry.
THE DREAMING WHEEL.
Down slant the moonbeams to the floor?Through the garret's scented air,?And show a thin-spoked spinning-wheel,?Standing ten years and more?Far from the hearth-stone's woe and weal,--?The ghost of a lost day's care!
And over the