Through the long summer sunshine the Cottage is stirred
    By passers, who brokenly fling them a word: 
    Such tidings of slaughter!  “The enemy cowers;”—­
    “He breaks!”—­“He is flying!”—­“Manassas is ours!”

    ’Tis evening:  and Archie, alone on the grass,
    Sits watching the fire-flies gleam as they pass,
    When sudden he rushes, too eager to wait,—­
    “Mamma! there’s an ambulance stops at the gate!”

    Suspense then is past:  he is borne from the field,—­
    “God help me!...  God grant it be not on his shield!”
    And Alice, her passionate soul in her eyes,
    And hope and fear winging each quicken’d step, flies,—­
    Embraces, with frantical wildness, the form
    Of her husband, and finds ... it is living, and warm!

III.

    Ye, who by the couches of languishing ones,
    Have watched through the rising and setting of suns,—­
    Who, silent, behind the close curtain, withdrawn,
    Scarce know that the current of being sweeps on,—­
    To whom outer life is unreal, untrue,
    A world with whose moils ye have nothing to do;
    Who feel that the day, with its multiform rounds,
    Is full of discordant, impertinent sounds,—­
    Who speak in low whispers, and stealthily tread,
    As if a faint footfall were something to dread,—­
    Who find all existence,—­its gladness, its gloom,—­
    Enclosed by the walls of that limited room,—­
    Ye only can measure the sleepless unrest
    That lies like a night-mare on Alice’s breast.

    Days come and days go, and she watches the strife
    So evenly balanced, ’twixt death and ’twixt life;
    Thanks God he still breathes, as each evening takes wing,
    And dares not to think what the morrow may bring.

    In the lone, ghostly midnight, he raves as he lies,
    With death’s ashen pallidness dimming his eyes: 
    He shouts the sharp war-cry,—­he rallies his men,—­
    He is on the red field of Manassas again.

    “Now, courage, my comrades!  Keep steady! lie low! 
    Wait, like the couch’d lion, to spring on your foe: 
    Ye’ll face without flinching the cannons’ grim mouth,
    For ye’re ’Knights of the Horse-Shoe’—­ye’re Sons of the South! 
    There’s Jackson!—­how brave he rides! coursing at will,
    Midst the prostrated lines on the crest of the hill;
    God keep him! for what will we do if he falls? 
    Be ready, good fellows!—­be cool when he calls
    To the charge:  Oh! we’ll beat them,—­we’ll turn them,—­and then
    We’ll ride them down madly!—­On!  Onward! my men!”

    The feverish frenzy o’erwearies him soon,
    And back on his pillows he sinks in a swoon.