Who deign not to clipper their own dainty feet,
    Whose wants swarthy handmaids stand ready to meet,
    Whose fingers decline the light kerchief to hem,—­
    What aid in this struggle is hoped for from them?

    Yet see! how they haste from their bowers of ease,
    Their dormant capacities fired,—­to seize
    Every feminine weapon their skill can command,—­
    To labor with head, and with heart, and with hand. 
    They stitch the rough jacket, they shape the coarse shirt,
    Unheeding though delicate fingers be hurt;
    They bind the strong haversack, knit the grey glove,
    Nor falter nor pause in their service of love.

    When ever were people subdued, overthrown,
    With women to cheer them on, brave as our own? 
    With maidens and mothers at work on their knees,
    When ever were soldiers as fearless as these?

    June’s flower-wreathed sceptre is dropped with a sigh,
    And forth like an empress steps stately July: 
    She sits all unveiled, amidst sunshine and balms,
    As Zenobia sat in her City of Palms!

    Not yet has the martial horizon grown dun,
    Not yet has the terrible conflict begun: 
    But the tumult of legions,—­the rush and the roar,
    Break over our borders, like waves on the shore. 
    Along the Potomac, the confident foe
    Stands marshalled for onset,—­prepared, at a blow,
    To vanquish the daring rebellion, and fling
    Utter ruin at once on the arrogant thing!

    How sovran the silence that broods o’er the sky,
    And ushers the twenty-first morn of July;
    —­Date, written in fire on history’s scroll,—­
    —­Date, drawn in deep blood-lines on many a soul!

    There is quiet at Beechenbrook:  Alice’s brow
    Is wearing a Sabbath tranquility now,
    As softly she reads from the page on her knee,—­
    “Thou wilt keep him in peace who is stayed upon Thee!”
    When Sophy bursts breathlessly into the room,—­
    “Oh! mother! we hear it,—­we hear it!.., the boom
    Of the fast and the fierce cannonading!—­it shook
    The ground till it trembled, along by the brook.”

    One instant the listener sways in her seat,—­
    The paralysed heart has forgotten to beat;
    The next, with the speed and the frenzy of fear,
    She gains the green hillock, and pauses to hear.

    Again and again the reverberant sound
    Is fearfully felt in the tremulous ground;
    Again and again on their senses it thrills,
    Like thunderous echoes astray in the hills.

    On tip-toe,—­the summer wind lifting his hair,
    With nostril expanded, and scenting the air
    Like a mettled young war-horse that tosses his mane,
    And frettingly champs at the bit and the rein,—­
    Stands eager, exultant, a twelve-year-old boy,
    His face all aflame with a rapturous joy.