Sunday at Shiloh, and the day
When Stonewall charged—­McClellan’s crimson May,
And Chickamauga’s wave of death,
And of the Wilderness the cypress wreath—­
    All these have passed away. 
The life in the veins of Treason lags,
Her daring color-bearers drop their flags,
  And yield. Now shall we fire? 
    Can poor spite be? 
Shall nobleness in victory less aspire
Than in reverse?  Spare Spleen her ire,
  And think how Grant met Lee.

The Muster:[17]
Suggested by the Two Days’ Review at Washington
(May, 1865.)

The Abrahamic river—­
  Patriarch of floods,
Calls the roll of all his streams
  And watery mutitudes: 
      Torrent cries to torrent,
        The rapids hail the fall;
      With shouts the inland freshets
        Gather to the call.

    The quotas of the Nation,
      Like the water-shed of waves,
    Muster into union—­
      Eastern warriors, Western braves.

    Martial strains are mingling,
      Though distant far the bands,
    And the wheeling of the squadrons
      Is like surf upon the sands.

    The bladed guns are gleaming—­
      Drift in lengthened trim,
    Files on files for hazy miles—­
      Nebulously dim.

    O Milky Way of armies—­
      Star rising after star,
    New banners of the Commonwealths,
      And eagles of the War.

The Abrahamic river
  To sea-wide fullness fed,
Pouring from the thaw-lands
  By the God of floods is led: 
      His deep enforcing current
        The streams of ocean own,
      And Europe’s marge is evened
        By rills from Kansas lone.

Aurora-Borealis. 
Commemorative of the Dissolution of Armies at the Peace. 
(May, 1865.)

What power disbands the Northern Lights
  After their steely play? 
The lonely watcher feels an awe
  Of Nature’s sway,
    As when appearing,
    He marked their flashed uprearing
In the cold gloom—­
  Retreatings and advancings,
(Like dallyings of doom),
  Transitions and enhancings,
    And bloody ray.

The phantom-host has faded quite,
  Splendor and Terror gone—­
Portent or promise—­and gives way
  To pale, meek Dawn;
    The coming, going,
    Alike in wonder showing—­
Alike the God,
  Decreeing and commanding
The million blades that glowed,
  The muster and disbanding—­
    Midnight and Morn.

The Released Rebel Prisoner.[18] (June, 1865.)

Armies he’s seen—­the herds of war,
  But never such swarms of men
As now in the Nineveh of the North—­
  How mad the Rebellion then!

And yet but dimly he divines
  The depth of that deceit,
And superstition of vast pride
  Humbled to such defeat.

Seductive shone the Chiefs in arms—­
  His steel the nearest magnet drew;
Wreathed with its kind, the Gulf-weed drives—­
  ’Tis Nature’s wrong they rue.