Slaughter of man and steed!
Now, stark and cold,

Among thy fallen braves thou liest,
And even with thy blood defiest
The wolfish foe:

But ah, thou liest low,

And all our birthday song is hushed indeed!

Young lion of the plain,

Thou of the tawny mane!
Hotly the soldiers' hearts shall beat,
Their mouths thy death repeat,
Their vengeance seek the trail again
Where thy red doomsmen be;

But on the charge no more shall stream
Thy hair, -no more thy sabre gleam,
No more ring out thy battle-shout,
Thy cry of victory!

Not when a hero falls

The sound a world appalls: For while we plant his cross There is a glory, even in the loss: But when some craven heart

From honor dares to part,

Then, then, the groan, the blanching cheek,
And men in whispers speak,

Nor kith nor country dare reclaim
From the black depths his name.

Thou, wild young warrior, rest, By all the prairie winds caressed!

Swift was thy dying pang;
Even as the war-cry rang
Thy deathless spirit mounted high
And sought Columbia's sky:
There, to the northward far,
Shines a new star,

And from it blazes down

The light of thy renown!

Edmund Clarence Stedman.

Blue Lick Springs, Ky.

THE SHADOWS IN THE VALLEY.

HERE's a mossy, shady valley,

THERE

Where the waters wind and flow,
And the daisies sleep in winter,
'Neath a coverlid of snow;
And violets, blue-eyed violets,
Bloom in beauty in the spring,
And the sunbeams kiss the wavelets,
Till they seem to laugh and sing.

But in autumn, when the sunlight
Crowns the cedar-covered hill,
Shadows darken in the valley,
Shadows ominous and still;

And the yellow leaves like banners
Of an elfin-host that's fled,

Tinged with gold and royal purple,
Flutter sadly overhead.

And those shadows, gloomy shadows,
Like dim phantoms on the ground,
Stretch their dreamy lengths forever
On a daisy-covered mound.

And I loved her, yes, I loved her,
But the angels loved her, too,
So she's sleeping in the valley,
'Neath the sky so bright and blue.

And no slab of pallid marble

Rears its white and ghastly head,
Telling wanderers in the valley
Of the virtues of the dead;
But a lily is her tombstone,
And a dew-drop, pure and bright,
Is the epitaph an angel wrote
In the stillness of the night.

And I'm mournful, very mournful,
For my soul doth ever crave
For the fading of the shadows
From that little woodland grave;
For the memory of the loved one
From my soul will never part,
And those shadows in the valley
Dim the sunshine of my heart.

Henry Lynden Flash.

Calaveras, Cal.

ON A CONE OF THE BIG TREES.

QROWN foundling of the Western wood,
Babe of primeval wildernesses!
Long on my table thou hast stood
Encounters strange and rude caresses;
Perchance contented with thy lot,
Surroundings new and curious faces,
As though ten centuries were not
Imprisoned in thy shining cases!

Thou bring'st me back the halcyon days
Of grateful rest; the week of leisure,
The journey lapped in autumn haze,

The sweet fatigue that seemed a pleasure,
The morning ride, the noonday halt,
The blazing slopes, the red dust rising,
And then the dim, brown, columned vault,
With its cool, damp, sepulchral spicing.

Once more I see the rocking masts
That scrape the sky, their only tenant

The jay-bird that in frolic casts

From some high yard his broad blue pennant. I see the Indian files that keep

Their places in the dusty heather, Their red trunks standing ankle deep In moccasins of rusty leather.

I see all this, and marvel much

That thou, sweet woodland waif, art able

To keep the company of such

As throng thy friend's

the poet's table :

The latest spawn the press hath cast,

66

The modern Pope's," "the later Byron's," — Why e'en the best may not outlast

Thy poor relation, Sempervirens.

Thy sire saw the light that shone
On Mohammed's uplifted crescent,
On many a royal gilded throne

And deed forgotten in the present;
He saw the age of sacred trees

And Druid groves and mystic larches;
And saw from forest domes like these
The builder bring his Gothic arches.
And must thou, foundling, still forego
Thy heritage and high ambition,
To lie full lowly and full low,

Adjusted to thy new condition?
Not hidden in the drifted snows,

But under ink-drops idly spattered, And leaves ephemeral as those

That on thy woodland tomb were scattered.

Yet lie thou there, O friend! and speak
The moral of thy simple story :
Though life is all that thou dost seek,

And age alone thy crown of glory, — Not thine the only germs that fail

The purpose of their high creation, If their poor tenements avail

For worldly show and ostentation.

Bret Harte.