Perhaps 'twas boyish fancy,-for the reader
Was youngest of them all,-

But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar
A silence seemed to fall;

The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows,
Listened in every spray,

While the whole camp, with "Nell" on English meadows,

Wandered and lost their way.

And so in mountain solitudes o'ertaken

As by some spell divine

Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken

From out the gusty pine.

Lost is that camp, and wasted all its fire :
And he who wrought that spell?—
Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire,
Ye have one tale to tell!

Lost is that camp! but let its fragrant story
Blend with the breath that thrills

With hop-vines' incense all the pensive glory
That fills the Kentish hills.

And on that grave where English oak and holly And laural wreaths intwine,

Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly,

This spray of Western pine.

FRANCIS BRET HARTE.

THE ENGINEER'S SIGNAL.

Two low whistles, quaint and clear,
That was the signal the engineer-

That was the signal that Guild, 'tis saidGave to his wife at Providence,

As through the sleeping town, and thence,
Out in the night,

Out in the light,

Down past the farms, lying white, he sped;

As a husband's greeting, scant no doubt,
Yet to the woman looking out,
Watching and waiting, no serenade,
Love song or midnight roundelay,
Said what that whistle seemed to say:
"To my trust true,

So, love, to you!

Working or waiting, Good-night!" it said.

Brisk young bagmen, tourists fine,
Old commuters along the line,
Brakemen and porters glanced ahead,

Smiled as the signal, sharp, intense, Pierced through the shadows of Providence"Nothing amiss

Nothing-it is!

Only Guild calling his wife," they said,

Summer and winter, the old refrain

Rang o'er the billows of ripening grain,

Pierced through the budding boughs o'erhead,
Flew down the track when the red leaves burned
Like living coals from the engine spurned,
Sang as it flew;

"To our trust true,

First of all, duty-Good-night," it said.

And then, one night, it was heard no more,
From Stonington over Rhode Island shore,
And the folks in Providence smiled and said,
As they turned in their beds, “The Engineer
Has once forgotten his midnight cheer."
One only knew,

To his trust true,

Guild lay under his engine, dead.

FRANCIS BRET HARTE.

BATTLE-HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC.

MINE eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord :

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored:

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:

His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred

circling camps;

They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:

His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnish'd rows of steel:

"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;

Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,

Since God is marching on."

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:

Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!

Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across

the sea,

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you

and me:

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make

men free,

While God is marching on.

JULIA WARD Howe.

THE OLD FLAG.

OFF with your hat as the flag goes by!
And let the heart have its say;
You're man enough for a tear in your eye
That you will not wipe away.

You're man enough for a thrill that goes
To your very finger-tips-

Ay! the lump just then in your throat that rose
Spoke more than your parted lips.

Lift up the boy on your shoulder, high,
And show him the faded shred-

Those stripes would be red as the sunset sky
If Death could have dyed them red.

The man that bore it with Death has lain
This twenty years and more;—
He died that the work should not be vain
Of the men who bore it before.

The man that bears it is bent and old,
And ragged his beard and gray,—
But look at his eye fire young and bold,
At the tune that he hears them play.

The old tune thunders through all the air,
And strikes right into the heart ;—
If ever it calls for you, boy, be there!
Be there, and ready to start.