The Fortitude of the North
under the Disaster of the Second Manassas.

They take no shame for dark defeat
  While prizing yet each victory won,
Who fight for the Right through all retreat,
  Nor pause until their work is done. 
The Cape-of-Storms is proof to every throe;
  Vainly against that foreland beat
Wild winds aloft and wilder waves below: 
  The black cliffs gleam through rents in sleet
When the livid Antarctic storm-clouds glow.

On the Men of Maine
killed in the Victory of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Afar they fell.  It was the zone
  Of fig and orange, cane and lime
(A land how all unlike their own,
With the cold pine-grove overgrown),
  But still their Country’s clime. 
And there in youth they died for her—­
      The Volunteers,
For her went up their dying prayers: 
  So vast the Nation, yet so strong the tie. 
What doubt shall come, then, to deter
  The Republic’s earnest faith and courage high.

An Epitaph.

When Sunday tidings from the front
  Made pale the priest and people,
And heavily the blessing went,
  And bells were dumb in the steeple;
The Soldier’s widow (summering sweerly here,
  In shade by waving beeches lent)
  Felt deep at heart her faith content,
And priest and people borrowed of her cheer.

Inscription
for Marye’s Heights, Fredericksburg.

To them who crossed the flood
And climbed the hill, with eyes
  Upon the heavenly flag intent,
  And through the deathful tumult went
Even unto death:  to them this Stone—­
Erect, where they were overthrown—­
  Of more than victory the monument.

The Mound by the Lake.

The grass shall never forget this grave. 
When homeward footing it in the sun
  After the weary ride by rail,
The stripling soldiers passed her door,
  Wounded perchance, or wan and pale,
She left her household work undone—­
Duly the wayside table spread,
  With evergreens shaded, to regale
Each travel-spent and grateful one. 
So warm her heart—­childless—­unwed,
Who like a mother comforted.

On the Slain at Chickamauga.

Happy are they and charmed in life
  Who through long wars arrive unscarred
At peace.  To such the wreath be given,
If they unfalteringly have striven—­
  In honor, as in limb, unmarred. 
Let cheerful praise be rife,
  And let them live their years at ease,
Musing on brothers who victorious died—­
  Loved mates whose memory shall ever please.

And yet mischance is honorable too—­
  Seeming defeat in conflict justified
Whose end to closing eyes is his from view. 
The will, that never can relent—­
The aim, survivor of the bafflement,
    Make this memorial due.

An uninscribed Monument
on one of the Battle-fields of the Wilderness.