Lay him low, lay him low,
In the clover or the snow!
What cares he? he cannot know:
Lay him low!

As man may, he fought his fight,
Proved his truth by his endeavor,
Let him sleep in solemn night,
Sleep forever and forever.
Lay him low, lay him low,
In the clover or the snow!
What cares he? he cannot know;
Lay him low!

Fold him in his country's stars,
Roll the drum and fire the volley!
What to him are all our wars?-
What but death bemocking folly ?
Lay him low, lay him low,
In the clover or the snow!
What cares he? he cannot know :
Lay him low!

Leave him to God's watching eye:

Trust him to the hand that made him.

Mortal love weeps idly by ;

God alone has power to aid him.

Lay him low, lay him low,

In the clover or the snow!

What cares he? he cannot know,
Lay him low!

GEORGE HENRY BOKER.

THE UNRETURNING BRAVE

WE sit here in the Promised Land

That flows with Freedom's honey and milk;
But 't was they won it, sword in hand,
Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk.

We welcome back our bravest and our best;
Ah me! not all! some come not with the rest,
Who went forth brave and bright as any here!
I strive to mix some gladness with my strain,
But the sad strings complain,

And will not please the ear;

I sweep them for a pæan, but they wane
Again and yet again

Into a dirge, and die away in pain.
In these brave ranks I only see the gaps,

Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps,

Dark to the triumph which they died to gain.

Who went, and who returned not.— Say not so!
'T is not the grapes of Canaan that repay,
But the high faith that failed not by the way;
Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave;
No bar of endless night exiles the brave;
And to the saner mind

We rather seem the dead that stayed behind.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (Commemoration Ode).

LORD RAGLAN

Ан, not because our Soldier died before his field was won ; Ah, not because life would not last till life's long task were

done,

Wreathe one less leaf, grieve with less grief, - of all our hosts that led

Not last in work and worth approved, Lord Raglan lieth dead.

His nobleness he had of none, War's Master taught him war, And prouder praise that Master gave than meaner lips can

mar;

Gone to his grave, his duty done; if farther any seek,
He left his life to answer them,—a soldier's,- let it speak!

'T was his to sway a blunted sword,- to fight a fated field,
While idle tongues talked victory, to struggle not to yield;
Light task for placeman's ready pen to plan a field for fight,
Hard work and hot with steel and shot to win that field aright.

Tears have been shed for the brave dead; mourn him who mourned for all!

Praise hath been given for strife well striven, praise him who strove o'er all,

Nor count that conquest little, though no banner flaunt it far, That under him our English hearts beat Pain and Plague and

War.

And if he held those English hearts too good to pave the path To idle victories, shall we grudge what noble palm he hath? Like ancient Chief he fought a-front, and 'mid his soldiers

seen,

His work was aye as stern as theirs; oh! make his grave as

green.

They know him well, the Dead who died that Russian wrong should cease,

Where fortune doth not measure men, their souls and his have

peace;

Aye! as well spent in sad sick tent as they in bloody strife, For English homes our English Chief gave what he had EDWIN ARNOLD.

his life.

VALE*

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum." When

For me the end has come, and I am dead,
And little voluble chattering daws of men
Peck at me curiously, let it then be said
By some one brave enough to speak the truth :
Here lies a great soul killed by cruel wrong.
Down all the balmy days of his fresh youth,

To his bleak, desolate noon, with sword, and song,
And speech that rushed up hotly from the heart,
He wrought for Liberty, till his own wound
(He had been stabbed), concealed with painful art
Through wasting years, mastered him, and he swooned,
And sank there where you see him lying now,
With that word "Failure" written on his brow.

But say that he succeeded. If he missed

World's honors, and world's plaudits, and the wage
Of the world's deft lacqueys, still his lips were kissed
Daily by those high angels who assauge
The thirstings of the poets for he was
Born unto singing, and a burthen lay
Mightily on him, and he moaned because
He could not rightly utter in the day

What God taught in the night. Sometimes, nathless,
Power fell upon him, and bright tongues of flame,
And blessings reached him from poor souls in stress,
And benedictions from black pits of shame,
And little children's love, and old men's prayers,
And a Great Hand that led him unawares.

So he died rich. And if his eyes were blurred
With thick films - silence! he is in his grave.
Greatly he suffered; greatly, too, he erred;

Yet broke his heart in trying to be brave.
Nor did he wait till Freedom had become
The popular shibboleth of the courtier's lips,
But smote for her when God Himself seemed dumb
And all His arching skies were in eclipse.

* Written immediately before his suicide.

He was a-weary, but he fought his fight,

And stood for simple manhood; and was joyed
To see the august broadening of the light,

And new earths heaving heavenward from the void.
He loved his fellows, and their love was sweet
Plant daisies at his head and at his feet.

RICHARD REALF.

DICKENS IN CAMP

ABOVE the pines the moon was slowly drifting,
The river sang below;

The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting
Their minarets of snow.

The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted
The ruddy tints of health

On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted
In the fierce race for wealth;

Till one arose, and from his pack's scant treasure
A hoarded volume drew,

And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure,
To hear the tale anew;

And then, while round them shadows gathered faster,
And as the firelight fell,

He read aloud the book wherein the Master
Had writ of Little Nell.

Perhaps 't was boyish fancy,- for the reader
Was youngest of them all,

But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar
A silence seemed to fall:

The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows,
Listened in every spray,

While the whole camp, with Nell, on English meadows
Wandered and lost their way.

And so in mountain solitudes - o'ertaken

As by some spell divine

Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken From out the gusty pine.

Lost is that camp, and wasted all its fire:

And he who wrought that spell ?

Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire,
Ye have one tale to tell!

'Lost is that camp! but let its fragrant story
Blend with the breath that thrills

With hop-vines' incense all the pensive glory
That fills the Kentish hills.

And on that grave where English oak and holly
And laurel wreaths intwine,

Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly —
This spray of Western pine.

BRET HARTE.

OBSEQUIES OF DAVID THE PAINTER

[EX-MEMBER OF THE FRENCH NATIONAL CONVENTION]

THE pass is barred! "Fall back!" cries the guard; cross not the French frontier!"

As with solemn tread, of the exiled dead the funeral drew near. For the sentinelle hath noticed well what no plume, no pall can hide,

That yon hearse contains the sad remains of a banished regicide! "But pity take, for his glory's sake," said his children to the

guard;

"Let his noble art plead on his part — let a grave be his reward!

France knew his name in her hour of fame nor the aid of his pencil scorned;

Let his passport be the memory of the triumphs he adorned!"

"That corpse can't pass! 't is my duty, alas!" said the frontier sentinelle,

"But pity take for his country's sake, and his clay do not repel

From its kindred earth, from the land of his birth!" cried the mourners in their turn;

66

Oh, give to France the inheritance of her painter's funeral

urn:

His pencil traced, on the Alpine waste of the pathless Mont Bernard,

Napoleon's course on the snow-white horse: - let a grave be his reward!

Let his passport be the memory of his native country's splendor!"

"Ye cannot pass,

" said the guard,

"alas!" (for tears be

dimmed his eyes)

"Though France may count to pass that mount a glorious

enterprise;"