my, just before our sharp-shooters opened upon them, the cock's clear, shrill clarion rung out on the sulphurous air. This strange defiance, while it cheered and amused our boys, fell with a depressing effect upon the ears of the enemy. When the foe retired to return no more, the cock, with repeated crows, sounded the victory.-Savannah Republican, January 8.

THE PEACE MOVEMENT.-The peace movement at the North is fairly begun at last. The voice of a populous longing to close a hopeless and ruinous war of aggression, can no longer be stifled. The mighty rabble of New-York and Philadelphia have caught up the cry raised by the Hoosiers of the North-west, and day by day the peace element in party politics grows stronger and more distinct. The utterances which reach us show that there has been no lack of venal presses and unscrupulous politicians, shaping their course so as to share the rising fortunes of the anti-war movement. Everywhere throughout the North we find supple demagogues echoing the popular sentiment with a vigor and boldness which, a year ago, would have consigned them to a dungeon; and even the fearless and consistent Vallandigham takes a step farther than he ever dared before, and unfurls the white flag in the very halls of the Yankee Congress.

To give to the new party such an overwhelming and decisive preponderance of strength as will at once terminate the effort to subjugate the South, we believe that it is only necessary that, in the next great shock of arms, which must now be close at hand, our troops shall once more vindicate their superiority over the ruffianly invaders whom they must encounter. That our brave soldiers may enter this final struggle under the least possible disadvantage of numbers, is an object which should enlist all the attention and energies of those who rule the policy of the Confederacy.— Charleston Mercury, January 31.

January 30.-A daughter of South-Carolina writes to the Charleston Courier from Darlington district: "I propose to spin the thread to make the cord to execute the order of our noble President, Davis, when old Butler is caught, and my daughter asks that she may be allowed to adjust it round his neck."

LINES.

BY J. G. WHITTIER.

Men of the Northland! where's the manly spirit
Of the true hearted and the unshackled gone?
Sons of old freemen! do we but inherit
Their names alone?

Is the old Pilgrim spirit quenched within us?
Stoops the strong manhood of our souls so low
That Mammon's lure or Party's wile can win us
To silence now?

Now, when our land to ruin's brink is verging, In God's name let us speak while there is time! Now, when the padlocks for our lips are forging, Silence is crime!

What! shall we henceforth humbly ask as favors Rights all our own? In madness shall we barter For treacherous peace the freedom nature gave us, God and our charter?

Here shall the statesman forge his human fetters,
Here the false jurist human rights deny,
And in the church their proud and skilled abettors
Make truth a lie!

Torture the pages of the hallowed Bible,
To sanction crime, and robbery, and blood!
And, in Oppression's hateful service, libel
Both man and God!

Shall our New-England stand erect no longer,
But stoop in chains upon her downward way,
Thicker to gather on her limbs, and stronger
Day after day?

Oh! no, methinks from all her wild, green mountains—
From valleys where her slumbering fathers lie-
From her blue rivers and her welling fountains,
And clear, cold sky-

From her rough coast and isles which hungry occan
Gnaws with his surges-from the fisher's skiff,
With white sail swaying to the billow's motion
Round rock and cliff-

From the free fireside of her unbought farmer-
From her free laborer at his loom and wheel-
From the brown smith-shop, where beneath the ham-

mer

Rings the red steel

From each and all, if God hath not forsaken
Our land, and left us to an evil choice,
Loud as the summer's thunderbolt shall waken
A people's voice!

Startling and stern! the Northern winds shall bear it
Over Potomac's to St. Mary's wave;
And buried Freedom shall awake to hear it
Within her grave.

Oh! let that voice go forth! the bondman sighing
By Santee's wave, in Mississippi's cane,
Shall feel the hope, within his bosom dying,
Revive again.

Let it go forth! The millions who are gazing
Sadly upon us from afar shall smile,
And unto God devout thanksgiving raising,
Bless us the while.

Oh! for your ancient freedom, pure and holy,
For the deliverance of a groaning earth,
For the wronged captive, bleeding, crushed, and lowly,
Let it go forth!

Sons of the best of fathers! will ye falter
With all they left ye perilled and at stake?
Ho! once again on Freedom's holy altar
The fire awake!

Prayer strengthened for the trial, come together,
Put on the harness for the moral fight,
And with the blessing of your heavenly Father,
MAINTAIN THE RIGHT!

OREMUS.

BY GEORGE H. BOKER.

We will not raise, O God! the formal prayer
Of broken heart and shattered nerve;
Thou know'st our griefs, our wants, and whatsoc'er
Is best for those who serve.

Before thy feet, in silence and in awe,
We open lay our eause and need;
As brave men may, the patriot sword we draw,
But thine must be the deed.

We have no pageantry, to please thy eye,
Save marshaled men, who marching come
Beneath thy gaze in armed panoply;
No music save the drum.

We have no altar builded in thy sight,

From which the fragrant offerings rise,
Save this wild field of hot and bloody fight;
These dead our sacrifice.

To this great cause the force of prayer is given,
The wordless prayer of righteous will,
Before whose strength the ivory gates of heaven
Fall open, and are still.

For we believe, within our inmost souls,
That what men do with spirit sad,

To thee in one vast cloud of worship rolls-
Rolls up, and makes thee glad.

O God! if reason may presume so far,
We say our cause is also thine;

We read its truth in every flashing star,
In every sacred line.

By thy commission freedom first was sent,
To hold the tyrant's force at bay;

The chain that broke in Egypt was not meant
To bind our shining day.

Freedom to all! in Thy great name we cry,
And lift to heaven thy bloody sword;
Too long have we been blind in heart and eye
To thy outspoken word.

Before the terrors of that battle-call,

As flax before the gusty flame,
Down, down, the vanquished enemy shall fall,
Stricken with endless shame!

Here let division cease. Join hand with hand,
Join voice with voice; a general shout
Shall, like a whirlwind, sweep our native land,
And purge the traitors out!

Fear not or faint not. God, who ruleth men,
Marks where his noble martyrs lie;
They shall all rise beneath his smile again;
His foes alone shall die.

AFTER ALL.

BY WM. WINTER.

The apples are ripe in the orchard, The work of the reaper is done, And the golden woodlands redden

In the blood of the dying sun. At the cottage-door the grandsire Sits pale in his easy chair, While the gentle wind of twilight Plays with his silver hair.

A woman is kneeling beside him;
A fair young head is pressed,
In the first wild passion of sorrow,
Against his aged breast.

And far from over the distance
The faltering echoes come
Of the flying blast of trumpet,
And the rattling roll of drum.

And the grandsire speaks in a whisper:
"The end no man can see;

But we give him to his country,

And we give our prayers to Thee."

The violets star the meadows,
The rose-buds fringe the door,
And over the grassy orchard

The pink-white blossoms pour.

But the grandsire's chair is empty,
The cottage is dark and still;
There's a nameless grave in the battle-field,
And a new one under the hill.

And a pallid, tearless woman

By the cold hearth sits alone, And the old clock in the corner Ticks on with a steady drone.

A PATRIOTIC CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS.

BY J. G. L.

Come, Freedom's sons, arouse, arouse !
Nor longer now delay,

And pledge to God above your vows,
Rebellion foul to slay.

Come from the forge, come from the plough,
Come from the bank and store;

From wave and wood, come, Freemen, now,
And fight as those of yore.

Where Freemen all victorious stood,
Where tyranny did yield;

Just here, where your bold fathers' blood
Stained red the battle-field.

From North to South, from East to West,
Let Union shouts arise,

From valley deep to eagle's nest,
· And echo through the skies.

Come, bold sons of your pilgrim sires,
Sons of the brave and free,

Who left to you, their rightful heirs,
This glorious legacy.

This lovely home of hill and dell,
Of river, lake, and sea;

Where tyrant ruled, as William Tell
(Can find sweet liberty.

Come, then, from forge, and come from plough,
Come from the bank and store;

From wave and wood, come, Freemen, now,
To fight as those of yore.

A more than crown-a laurel wreath,
Around each patriot's brow-
While treason sleeps a traitor's death:
Then, UP, and win it now.

AVENGED!

BY ORPHEUS C. KERR,

God's scales of Justice hang between
The deed Unjust and the end Unseen,
And the sparrow's fall in the one is weighed
By the Lord's own hand in the other laid.

In the prairie path to our Sunset gate,
In the flow'ring heart of a new-born State,
Are the hopes of an old man's waning years,
'Neath headstones worn with an old man's tears.

When the bright sun sinks in the rose-lipped West,
His last red ray is the headstone's crest:
And the mounds he laves in a crimson flood
Are a Soldier's wealth baptized in blood!

Do ye ask who reared those headstones there,
And crowned with thorns a sire's gray hair?
And by whom the Land's great debt was paid
To the Soldier old, in the graves they made?

Shrink, Pity, shrink, at the question dire;
And, Honor, burn in a blush of fire!
Turn, Angel, turn, from the page thine eyes,
Or the Sin, once written, never dies!

They were men of the land he had fought to save
From a foreign foe that had crossed the wave,
When his sunlit youth was a martial song,
And shook a throne as it swelled along.

They were sons of a clime whose soft, warm breath
Is the soul of earth, and a life in death;
Where the Summer dreams on the couch of Spring,
And songs of birds through the whole year ring;

Where the falling leaf is the cup that grew
To catch the gems of the new leaf's dew,
And the winds that through the vine-leaves creep
Are the sighs of Time in a pleasant sleep.

But there lurked a taint in the clime so blest,
Like a serpent coiled in a ring-dove's nest,
And the human sounds to the car it gave
Were the clank of chains on a low-browed Slave.

The Soldier old, at his sentry-post,
Where the sun's last trail of light is lost,
Beheld the shame of the land he loved,
And the old, old love in his bosom moved.

He cried to the land, Beware! Beware

Of the symboled curse in the Bondman there!
And a prophet's soul in fire came down
To live in the voice of old John Brown.

He cried; and the ingrate answer came
In words of steel from a tongue of flame;
They dyed his hearth in the blood of kin,
And his dear ones fell for the Nation's Sin!

O matchless deed! that a fiend might scorn;
O deed of shame! for a world to mourn;
A prophet's pay in his blood most dear,
And a land to mock at a Father's tear!

Is't strange that the tranquil soul of age Was turned to strife in a madman's rage? Is't strange that the cry of blood did seem Like the roll of drums in a martial dream?

Is't strange that the clank of the Helot's chain Should drive the Wrong to the old man's brain, To fire his heart with a Santon's zeal,

And mate his arm to the Soldier's steel?

The bane of Wrong to its depth had gone,

And the sword of Right from its sheath was drawn,
But the cabined slave heard not his cry,
And the old man armed him but to die.

Ye may call him mad that he did not quail
When his stout blade broke on the unblest mail;
Ye may call him mad, that he struck alone,
And made the land's dark Curse his own;

But the Eye of God looked down and saw
A just life lost by an unjust law;

And black was the day with God's own frown
When the Southern Cross was a martyr's Crown!

Apostate clime! the blood then shed
Fell thick with vengeance on thy head,

To weigh it down 'neath the coming rod,
When thy red hand should be stretched to God.

Behold the price of the life ye took;

At the death ye gave 'twas a world that shook:
And the despot deed that one heart broke,
From their slavish sleep a million woke!

Not all alone did the victim fall,

Whose wrongs first brought him to your thrall:
The old man played a Nation's part,

And ye struck your blow at the Nation's heart!

J

The freemen host is at your door,

And a voice goes forth with a stern "No more!"
To the deadly Curse, whose swift redeem
Was the visioned thought of John Brown's dream.

To the Country's Wrong and the Country's stain,
It shall prove as the scythe to the yielding grain;
And the dauntless power to spread it forth
Is the free-born soul of the chainless North.

From the East, and West, and North they come,
To the bugle's call and the roll of drum;
And a form walks viewless by their side-
A form that was born when the Old Man died!

The Soldier old in his grave may rest,"
Afar with his dead in the prairie West;
But the red ray falls on the headstone there,
Like a God's reply to a soldier's prayer.

He may sleep in peace 'neath the greenwood pall,
For the land's great heart hath heard his call;
And a people's Will and a people's Might
Shall right the Wrong and proclaim the Right,

The foe may howl at the fiat just,
And gnash his fangs in the trodden dust;
But the battle leaves his bark a wreck,
And the Freeman's heel is on his track.

Not all in vain is the lesson taught,

That a great soul's Dream is the world's New Thought;
And the Scaffold marked with a death sublime
Is the Throne ordained for the coming time.

THE COLOR SERGEANT.

BY A. D. F. RANDOLPH.

You say that in every battle

No soldier was braver than he,
As, aloft in the roar and the rattle,
He carried the flag of the free:

I knew, ah! I knew he'd ne'er falter,
I could trust him, the dutiful boy.
My Robert was wilful-but Walter,
Dear Walter, was ever a joy.

And if he was true to his mother,

Do you think he his trust would betray,
And give up his place to another,

Or turn from the danger away?
He knew while afar he was straying,
He felt in the thick of the fight,
That at home his poor mother was praying
For him and the cause of the right!
Tell me, comrade, who saw him when dying,
What he said, what he did, if you can;
On the field in his agony lying,

Did he suffer and die like a man?
Do you think he once wished he had never
Borne arms for the right and the true?
Nay, he shouted Our Country forever!

When he died he was praying for you!
O my darling! my youngest and fairest,
Whom I gathered so close to my breast;
I called thee my dearest and rarest,

And thou wert my purest and best! I tell you, O friend! as a mother, Whose full heart is breaking to-day, The Infinite Father-none other

Can know what he's taken away!

I thank you once more for your kindness,
For this lock of his auburn hair:
Perhaps 'tis the one I in blindness

Last touched, as we parted just there!

When he asked, through his tears, should he linger
From duty, I answered him, Nay:
And he smiled, as he placed on my finger
The ring I am wearing to-day.

I watched him leap into that meadow;

There, a child, he with others had played; I saw him pass slowly the shadow

Of the trees where his father was laid;
And there, where the road meets two others,
Without turning he went on his way:

Once his face toward the foe-not his mother's
Should unman him, or cause him delay.
It may be that some day your duty
Will carry you that way again;
When the field shall be riper in beauty,
Enriched by the blood of the slain;
Would you see if the grasses are growing
On the grave of my boy? Will you see
If a flower, e'en the smallest, is blowing,
And pluck it, and send it to me?

Don't think, in my grief, I'm complaining;
I gave him, God took him, 'tis right;
And the cry of his mother remaining

Shall strengthen his comrades in fight.
Not for vengeance, to-day, in my weeping,
Goes my prayer to the Infinite Throne.
God pity the foe when he's reaping
The harvest of what he has sown!

Tell his comrades these words of his mother:
All over the wide land to-day,

The Rachels who weep with each other,
Together in agony pray.

They know in their great tribulation,

By the blood of their children outpoured, We shall smite down the foes of the Nation, In the terrible day of the Lord.

THE FISHERMAN OF BEAUFORT.

BY MRS. FRANCES D. GAGE.

The tide comes up, and the tide goes down,
And still the fisherman's boat,

At early dawn and at evening shade,
Is ever and ever afloat:

His net goes down, and his net comes up,
And we hear his song of glee,

"De fishes dey hates de ole slave nets,
But comes to de nets of de free."

The tide comes up, and the tide goes down,
And the oysterman below

Is picking away, in the slimy sands,
In the sands ob de long ago.
But now if an empty hand he bears,
He shudders no more with fear,

There's no stretching board for the aching bones,
And no lash of the overseer.

The tide comes up, and the tide goes down,
And ever I hear a song,

As the moaning winds, through the moss-hung oaks, Sweep surging ever along.

"O massa white man! help de slave,

And de wife and chillen too,

Eber dey'll work, wid de hard worn hand,
Ef ell gib 'em de work to do."

The tide comes up, and the tide goes down,
But it bides no tyrant's word,

As it chants unceasing the anthem grand
Of its Freedom, to the Lord.

The fisherman floating on its breast
Has caught up the key-note true,
"De sea works, massa, for't sef and God,
And so must de brack man too.

"Den gib him de work, and gib him de pay,
For de chillen and wife him love,

And de yam shall grow, and de cotton shall blow,
And him nebber, nebber rove;
For him love de ole Carlina State,

And de ole magnolia-tree:
Oh! nebber him trouble de icy Norf,
Ef de brack folks-am go free."