But God is love,-and finite minds can faintly comprehend How gentle Mercy, in His rule, may with stern Justice blend; And this poor soldier, seized and bound, found none to justify, While War's inexorable law decreed that he must die. 'Twas night. In a secluded room, with measured tread, and slow, A statesman of commanding mien, paced gravely to and fro. Oppress'd, he ponder'd on a land by civil discord rent; On brothers arm'd in deadly strife:-it was the President! The woes of thirty millions fill'd his burden'd heart with grief; Embattled hosts, on land and sea, acknowledged him their chief; And yet, amid the din of war, he heard the plaintive cry 'Twas morning.-On a tented field, and through the heated haze, Flash'd back, from lines of burnish'd arms, the sun's effulgent blaze; While, from a sombre prison-house, seen slowly to emerge, And in the midst, with faltering step, and pale and anxious face, In manacles, between two guards, a soldier had his place. shame, That smote his gallant heart with dread, and shook his manly frame! Still on, before the marshall'd ranks, the train pursued its way Up to the designated spot, whereon a coffin lay— His coffin! And, with reeling brain, despairing-desolateHe took his station by its side, abandon'd to his fate! Then came across his wavering sight strange pictures in the air: He saw his distant mountain home; he saw his mother there; IIe saw his father bow'd with grief, through fast-declining years; IIe saw a nameless grave; and then, the vision closed-in tears! Yet, once again. In double file, advancing, then, he saw And, shuddering, he awaited now the fatal volley's sound! Then suddenly was heard the noise of steeds and wheels approach,- And, rolling through a cloud of dust, appear'd a stately coach. On, past the guards, and through the field, its rapid course was bent, Till, halting, 'mid the lines was seen the nation's President! He came to save that stricken soul, now waking from despair; 'Twas Spring. Within a verdant vale, where Warwick's crystal tide Reflected, o'er its peaceful breast, fair fields on either side- Two threatening armies! One invoked by injured Liberty- 1 A sudden shock which shook the earth, 'mid vapor dense and dun, Proclaim'd, along the echoing hills, the conflict had begun; While shot and shell, athwart the stream with fiendish fury sped, To strew among the living lines the dying and the dead! Then, louder than the roaring storm, peal'd forth the stern command, Charge! soldiers, charge!" and, at the word, with shouts, a fearless band, Two hundred heroes from Vermont, rush'd onward, through the flood, And upward o'er the rising ground, they mark'd their blood! way in The smitten foe before them fled, in terror, from his postWhile, unsustain'd, two hundred stood, to battle with a host! Then, turning, as the rallying ranks, with murderous fire, replied They bore the fallen o'er the field, and through the purple tide! The fallen! And the first who fell in that unequal strife, Was he whom Mercy sped to save when Justice claim'd his life The pardon'd soldier! And, while yet the conflict raged around While yet his life-blood ebb'd away through every gaping wound While yet his voice grew tremulous, and death bedimm'd his eye He call'd his comrades to attest he had not fear'd to die! And, in his last expiring breath, a prayer to heaven was sentThat God, with His unfailing grace, would bless our President! On Board the Cumberland, MARCH 7, 1862. BY GEORGE H. BOKER. "On Board the Cumberland," it will be observed, is in the old ballad form of verse,—that simple and unadorned style in which the deeds of Robin Hood and his merry men, and the chivalry of "Chevy Chase," won and retained the admiration of a rude age, and also that of those in which the epic, the dramatic, and the lyric forms advanced and culminated in the highest honors of the classic school of English literature. The very simplicity of the ballad form gives it the element of native energy, and as such the dramatic reader feels the full force of its surging numbers and syllabic impulses; they enable him to gather up and hurl in a mighty mass, as it were, the soul of heroic passion, or to swell into one gushing current the tender sympathies of love and pity in extended quantities or abrupt explosions of the voice. This is the process by which the reader carries his auditor along with him, enchaining his attention, enlisting his feelings, and exciting his imagination, until the acts described, and not the manner of description, fill the eye of the mind, and the soul becomes captive to the imagery of the poet. "Stand to your guns, men!" Morris cried; Small need to pass the word; Our men at quarters ranged themselves And then began the sailors' jests: "What thing is that, I say?" "A 'long-shore meeting-house adrift Is standing down the bay!" A frown came over Morris' face; The strange, dark craft he knew: "That is the iron Merrimac, Mann'd by a rebel crew. "So shot your guns and point them straight: Before this day goes by, We'll try of what her metal's made." "Remember, boys, this flag of ours Has seldom left its place; And where it falls, the deck it strikes "I ask but this: or sink or swim, Or live or nobly die, My last sight upon earth may be Meanwhile the shapeless iron mass Her ports were closed; from stem to stern We wonder'd, question'd, strain'd our eyes, Joked-every thing but fear'd. She reach'd our range. Our broadside rang; Our heavy pivots roar'd; And shot and shell, a fire of hell, Against her side we pour'd. |