O crocuses with rain-wet eyes,

O tender-lipped anemones,

What do ye know of agony and death and blood-won victories?

No shadow breaks your sunshine-trance,

Though near you rolls, with slow advance, Clouding your shining leaves with dust, the anguishladen ambulance.

Yonder a white encampment hums;

The clash of martial music comes;

And now your startled stems are all a-tremble with the jar of drums.

Whether it lessen or increase,

Or whether trumpets shout or cease,

Still deep within your tranquil hearts the happy bees are murmuring "Peace!"

O flowers! the soul that faints or grieves
New comfort from your lips receives;

Sweet confidence and patient faith are hidden in your healing leaves.

Help us to trust, still on and on,

That this dark night will soon be gone,

And that these battle-stains are but the blood-red trouble of the dawn,

Dawn of a broader, whiter day

Than ever blessed us with its ray,

A dawn beneath whose purer light all guilt and wrong shall fade away.

Then shall our nation break its bands,
And, silencing the envious lands,

Stand in the searching light unshamed, with spotless robes, and clean, white hands.

Elizabeth Akers Allen.

THE NESTS AT WASHINGTON.

EFORE the White House portals

BEFO

The careless eyes behold

Three iron bombs uplifted,
Adusk in summer gold.

In dreamy mood I wandered
At Sabbath sunset there,
While the wide city's murmur
Hummed vaguely everywhere:

"Black seeds of desolation,"
I said, "by War's red hand
Sown in the fierce sirocco
Over the wasted land!

"Unholy with the holy,
What do ye here to-day,
Symbols of awful battle,

In Sabbath's peaceful ray?"

Angel of Dust and Darkness!
I heard thy woful breath,

With noise of all earth's battles,

Answer: "Let there be Death!"

I thought of many a midnight,
Where sprang terrific light
Over wide woods and marshes;
Fierce fireflies lit the night.

I saw beleaguered bastions
Leap up in red dismay,
Wide rivers all transfigured
Awake in dreadful day.

Asleep in peaceful sunshine
Glimmered the warlike things:
Into their hollow horror

Flew tenderest summer wings!

Deep in the awful chambers
Of the gigantic Death,

The wrens their nests had builded
And dwelt with loving breath.

Angel of Resurrection!

Over all buried strife

I heard thy bird-song whisper,

Wilmington, N. C.

RUNNING THE BLOCKADE.

A CHASE IN SOUNDINGS.

OVE in the stays, she lay,

HOWE

In the blockading grounds
Of the North Carolina sounds,
Beleaguered half a day,

The good ship Heir of Lynn:
The still air shut her in

The very focus of light;

Where the sea grows hot and white,

As if it had turned to salt

Or solid rock, with a fault

That clipped the horizon's edge
In a long, irregular ledge.

In the summer of sixty-three,
As still as they could be
The sea and air; and every
Spar lost in a reverie

Over its shadow, under

The sea, in curious wonder.

Not a cat's-paw turned the streamer,

To spell at it letter by letter;

And for fifty leagues and better,

You could see the smoke of a steamer

Drifting down in the offing.

You could hear the sullen coughing,

-

Over sixty miles away,
At Wilmington harbor and bay,
The pounding of cannon and mortar,
And the groan of torpedoes under
The sea, that came over her quarter,
Like the bellow of smothered thunder.

Uneasily looked the master

Now at the sea, and then

Off in a dream again

Of home, as the boa's'in cast her
Dipsy' lead in the shallow,
To a sort of nasal tune,
Larded with talk and tallow,
In the bight of the afternoon;
Drawling from sea-worn topics,
To sudden squalls in the tropics ;
And lee shores whose hot lips
Had opened and swallowed ships,
Till the slow talk seemed to pool
In the old Annapolis school;

And the master was

Joe" again,

With his messmate, Geordie of Maine,
Who loved, with loves like his own,
Sweethearts they never had won, -

-

Like the small blue flowers that live but a day,
Sweet things, in the inlets of Chesapeake bay.

The skies got bluer and bluer,
Till the far-off gunboat knew her,
And came up, hand over hand,

1 Deep sea.