Poems in War Time, vol 3, part 4 | Page 7

in the cool September
morn.
The clustered spires of Frederick stand
Green-walled by the hills of
Maryland.
Round about them orchards sweep,
Apple and peach tree fruited
deep,

Fair as the garden of the Lord
To the eyes of the famished rebel
horde,
On that pleasant morn of the early fall
When Lee marched over the
mountain-wall;
Over the mountains winding down,
Horse and foot, into Frederick
town.
Forty flags with their silver stars,
Forty flags with their crimson bars,
Flapped in the morning wind: the sun
Of noon looked down, and saw
not one.
Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
Bowed with her fourscore years
and ten;
Bravest of all in Frederick town,
She took up the flag the men hauled
down;
In her attic window the staff she set,
To show that one heart was loyal
yet.
Up the street came the rebel tread,
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.
Under his slouched hat left and right
He glanced; the old flag met his
sight.
"Halt!"--the dust-brown ranks stood fast.
"Fire!"--out blazed the
rifle-blast.
It shivered the window, pane and sash;
It rent the banner with seam
and gash.
Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
Dame Barbara snatched the
silken scarf.

She leaned far out on the window-sill,
And shook it forth with a royal
will.
"Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country's
flag," she said.
A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader
came;
The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman's deed and
word.
"Who touches a hair of yon gray head
Dies like a dog! March on!" he
said.
All day long through Frederick street
Sounded the tread of marching
feet.
All day long that free flag tost
Over the heads of the rebel host.
Ever its torn folds rose and fell
On the loyal winds that loved it well;
And through the hill-gaps sunset light
Shone over it with a warm
good-night.
Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er,
And the Rebel rides on his raids no
more.
Honor to her! and let a tear
Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier.
Over Barbara Frietchie's grave,
Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!
Peace and order and beauty draw
Round thy symbol of light and law;
And ever the stars above look down
On thy stars below in Frederick
town!
1863.

WHAT THE BIRDS SAID.
THE birds against the April wind
Flew northward, singing as they
flew;
They sang, "The land we leave behind
Has swords for
corn-blades, blood for dew."
"O wild-birds, flying from the South,
What saw and heard ye, gazing
down?"
"We saw the mortar's upturned mouth,
The sickened camp,
the blazing town!
"Beneath the bivouac's starry lamps,
We saw your march-worn
children die;
In shrouds of moss, in cypress swamps,
We saw your
dead uncoffined lie.
"We heard the starving prisoner's sighs,
And saw, from line and
trench, your sons
Follow our flight with home-sick eyes
Beyond the
battery's smoking guns."
"And heard and saw ye only wrong
And pain," I cried, "O wing-worn
flocks?"
"We heard," they sang, "the freedman's song,
The crash of
Slavery's broken locks!
"We saw from new, uprising States
The treason-nursing mischief
spurned,
As, crowding Freedom's ample gates,
The long estranged
and lost returned.
"O'er dusky faces, seamed and old,
And hands horn-hard with unpaid
toil,
With hope in every rustling fold,
We saw your star-dropt flag
uncoil.
"And struggling up through sounds accursed,
A grateful murmur
clomb the air;
A whisper scarcely heard at first,
It filled the
listening heavens with prayer.
"And sweet and far, as from a star,
Replied a voice which shall not
cease,
Till, drowning all the noise of war,
It sings the blessed song

of peace!"
So to me, in a doubtful day
Of chill and slowly greening spring,

Low stooping from the cloudy gray,
The wild-birds sang or seemed
to sing.
They vanished in the misty air,
The song went with them in their
flight;
But lo! they left the sunset fair,
And in the evening there was
light.
April, 1864.
THE MANTLE OF ST. JOHN DE MATHA.
A LEGEND OF "THE RED, WHITE, AND BLUE," A. D.
1154-1864.
A STRONG and mighty Angel,
Calm, terrible, and bright,
The
cross in blended red and blue
Upon his mantle white.
Two captives by him kneeling,
Each on his broken chain,
Sang
praise to God who raiseth
The dead to life again!
Dropping his cross-wrought mantle,
"Wear this," the Angel said;

"Take thou, O Freedom's priest, its sign,
The white, the blue, and
red."
Then rose up John de Matha
In the strength the Lord Christ gave,

And begged through all the land of France
The ransom of the slave.
The gates of tower and castle
Before him open flew,
The
drawbridge at his coming fell,
The door-bolt backward drew.
For all men owned his errand,
And paid his righteous tax;
And the
hearts of lord and peasant
Were in his hands as wax.
At last, outbound from Tunis,
His bark her anchor weighed,

Freighted with seven-score Christian souls
Whose ransom he had

paid.
But, torn by Paynim hatred,
Her sails in tatters hung;
And on the
wild waves, rudderless,
A shattered hulk she swung.
"God save us!" cried the captain,
"For naught can man avail;
Oh,
woe betide the ship that lacks
Her rudder