The wife who girds her husband’s sword,
    Mid little ones who weep or wonder,
  And bravely speaks the cheering word,
    What though her heart be rent asunder,
  Doomed nightly in her dreams to hear
    The bolts of death around him rattle,
  Hath shed as sacred blood as e’er
    Was poured upon the field of battle!

  The mother who conceals her grief
    While to her breast her son she presses,
  Then breathes a few brave words and brief,
    Kissing the patriot brow she blesses,
  With no one but her secret God
    To know the pain that weighs upon her,
  Sheds holy blood as e’er the sod
    Received on Freedom’s field of honor!

THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.

* * * * *

II.

FREEDOM.

THE PLACE WHERE MAN SHOULD DIE.

  How little recks it where men lie,
    When once the moment’s past
  In which the dim and glazing eye
    Has looked on earth its last,—­
  Whether beneath the sculptured urn
    The coffined form shall rest,
  Or in its nakedness return
    Back to its mother’s, breast!

  Death is a common friend or foe,
    As different men may hold,
  And at his summons each must go,
    The timid and the bold;
  But when the spirit, free and warm,
    Deserts it, as it must,
  What matter where the lifeless form
    Dissolves again to dust?

  The soldier falls ’mid corses piled
  Upon the battle-plain,
  Where reinless war-steeds gallop wild
    Above the mangled slain;
  But though his corse be grim to see,
    Hoof-trampled on the sod,
  What recks it, when the spirit free
    Has soared aloft to God?

  The coward’s dying eyes may close
    Upon his downy bed,
  And softest hands his limbs compose,
    Or garments o’er them spread. 
  But ye who shun the bloody fray,
    When fall the mangled brave,
  Go—­strip his coffin-lid away,
    And see him in his grave!

  ’Twere sweet, indeed, to close our eyes,
    With those we cherish near,
  And, wafted upwards by their sighs,
    Soar to some calmer sphere. 
  But whether on the scaffold high,
    Or in the battle’s van,
  The fittest place where man can die
    Is where he dies for man!

MICHAEL JOSEPH BARRY.

* * * * *

LIBERTY.

  What man is there so bold that he should say,
  “Thus, and thus only, would I have the Sea”? 
  For whether lying calm and beautiful,
  Clasping the earth in love, and throwing back
  The smile of Heaven from waves of amethyst;
  Or whether, freshened by the busy winds,
  It bears the trade and navies of the world