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.

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 hid 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

Silence and solitude may hint
  (Whose home is in yon piney wood)
What I, though tableted, could never tell—­
The din which here befell,
  And striving of the multitude. 
The iron cones and spheres of death
  Set round me in their rust,
    These, too, if just,
Shall speak with more than animated breath. 
  Thou who beholdest, if thy thought,
Not narrowed down to personal cheer,
Take in the import of the quiet here—­
  The after-quiet—­the calm full fraught;
Thou too wilt silent stand—­
Silent as I, and lonesome as the land.

ON THE GRAVE OF A YOUNG CAVALRY OFFICER KILLED IN THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA

Beauty and youth, with manners sweet, and
    friends—­
  Gold, yet a mind not unenriched had he
Whom here low violets veil from eyes. 
  But all these gifts transcended be: 
His happier fortune in this mound you see.

A REQUIEM For Soldiers lost in Ocean Transports