MY AUTUMN WALK.

ON woodlands ruddy with autumn
The amber sunshine lies;

I look on the beauty round me,
And tears come into my eyes.

For the wind that sweeps the meadows Blows out of the far Southwest, Where our gallant men are fighting, And the gallant dead are at rest.

The golden-rod is leaning,

And the purple aster waves

In a breeze from the land of battles,
A breath from the land of graves.

Full fast the leaves are dropping
Before that wandering breath;
As fast, on the field of battle,

Our brethren fall in death.

Beautiful over my pathway
The forest spoils are shed;

They are spotting the grassy hillocks
With purple and gold and red.

Beautiful is the death-sleep
Of those who bravely fight
In their country's holy quarrel,
And perish for the Right.

But who shall comfort the living,

The light of whose homes is gone:
The bride that, early widowed,

Lives broken-hearted on;

The matron whose sons are lying
In graves on a distant shore;
The maiden, whose promised husband
Comes back from the war no more?

I look on the peaceful dwellings
Whose windows glimmer in sight,
With croft and garden and orchard,
That bask in the mellow light;

And I know that, when our couriers
With news of victory come,
They will bring a bitter message
Of hopeless grief to some.

Again I turn to the woodlands,
And shudder as I see

The mock-grape's blood-red banner
Hung out on the cedar-tree;

And I think of days of slaughter,
And the night-sky red with flames,
On the Chattahoochee's meadows,
And the wasted banks of the James.

Oh, for the fresh spring-season,

When the groves are in their prime;

And far away in the future

Is the frosty autumn-time!

Oh, for that better season,

When the pride of the foe shall yield,
And the hosts of God and Freedom

March back from the well-won field;

And the matron shall clasp her first-born
With tears of joy and pride;

And the scarred and war-worn lover
Shall claim his promised bride!

The leaves are swept from the branches;
But the living buds are there,
With folded flower and foliage,
To sprout in a kinder air.

October, 1864.

DANTE.

WHO, mid the grasses of the field
That spring beneath our careless feet,
First found the shining stems that yield
The grains of life-sustaining wheat:

Who first, upon the furrowed land,

Strewed the bright grains to sprout, and grow,

And ripen for the reaper's hand

We know not, and we cannot know.

But well we know the hand that brought
And scattered, far as sight can reach,

The seeds of free and living thought

On the broad field of modern speech.

1865.

Mid the white hills that round us lie,

We cherish that Great Sower's fame,
And, as we pile the sheaves on high,
With awe we utter Dante's name.

Six centuries, since the poet's birth,
Have come and flitted o'er our sphere:
The richest harvest reaped on earth
Crowns the last century's closing year.

THE DEATH OF LINCOLN.

OH, slow to smite and swift to spare,
Gentle and merciful and just!

Who, in the fear of God, didst bear
The sword of power, a nation's trust!

In sorrow by thy bier we stand,
Amid the awe that hushes all,
And speak the anguish of a land

That shook with horror at thy fall.

Thy task is done; the bond are free:
We bear thee to an honored grave,
Whose proudest monument shall be

The broken fetters of the slave.

Pure was thy life; its bloody close

Hath placed thee with the sons of light,

Among the noble host of those

Who perished in the cause of Right.

April, 1865.

THE DEATH OF SLAVERY.

O THOU great Wrong, that, through the slow-paced years,
Didst hold thy millions fettered, and didst wield
The scourge that drove the laborer to the field,
And turn a stony gaze on human tears,

Thy cruel reign is o'er;

Thy bondmen crouch no more

In terror at the menace of thine eye;

For He who marks the bounds of guilty power, Long-suffering, hath heard the captive's cry,

And touched his shackles at the appointed hour, And lo! they fall, and he whose limbs they galled Stands in his native manhood, disenthralled.

A shout of joy from the redeemed is sent;
Ten thousand hamlets swell the hymn of thanks;
Our rivers roll exulting, and their banks
Send up hosannas to the firmament!

Fields where the bondman's toil
No more shall trench the soil,

Seem now to bask in a serener day;

The meadow-birds sing sweeter, and the airs
Of heaven with more caressing softness play,
Welcoming man to liberty like theirs.

A glory clothes the land from sea to sea,
For the great land and all its coasts are free.

Within that land wert thou enthroned of late,
And they by whom the nation's laws were made,
And they who filled its judgment-seats obeyed
Thy mandate, rigid as the will of Fate.