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Be the battle lost or won,

Though its smoke shall hide the sun,
I shall find my love,-the one
Born for me!

I shall know him where he stands,
All alone,

With the power in his hands
Not o'erthrown;

I shall know him by his face,
By his godlike front and grace;
I shall hold him for a space,
All my own!

It is he-O my love!
So bold!

It is I-all thy love

Foretold!

It is I. O love! what bliss!
Dost thou answer to my kiss?
O sweetheart! what is this
Lieth there so cold?

BATTLE-HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC

BY JULIA WARD HOWE

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:

His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;

They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps.

His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of

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steel:

As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my

grace shall deal;

Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,

Since God is marching on."

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call

retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judg

ment-seat:

Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!

Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the

sea,

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and

me:

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men

free,

While God is marching on.

ALL QUIET ALONG THE POTOMAC

BY ETHEL LYNN BEERS

"All quiet along the Potomac," they say,
"Except now and then a stray picket
Is shot, as he walks on his beat to and fro,
By a rifleman hid in the thicket.

'Tis nothing a private or two now and then
Will not count in the news of the battle;
Not an officer lost-only one of the men,
Moaning out, all alone, the death-rattle."

All quiet along the Potomac to-night,

Where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming; Their tents in the rays of the clear autumn moon, Or the light of the watch-fire, are gleaming. A tremulous sigh of the gentle night-wind.

Through the forest leaves softly is creeping; While stars up above, with their glittering eyes, Keep guard, for the army is sleeping.

There's only the sound of the lone sentry's tread,
As he tramps from the rock to the fountain,
And thinks of the two in the low trundle-bed
Far away in the cot on the mountain.

His musket falls slack; his face, dark and grim,
Grows gentle with memories tender,

As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep,
For their mother; may Heaven defend her!

The moon seems to shine just as brightly as then,
That night, when the love yet unspoken
Leaped up to his lips-when low-murmured vows
Were pledged to be ever unbroken.

Then drawing his sleeve roughly over his eyes,
He dashes off tears that are welling,
And gathers his gun closer up to its place,
As if to keep down the heart-swelling.

He passes the fountain, the blasted pine-tree,
The footstep is lagging and weary;

Yet onward he goes, through the broad belt of light,
Toward the shade of the forest so dreary.

Hark! was it the night-wind that rustled the leaves? Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing?

It looked like a rifle .

66

Ha! Mary, good-by!" The red life-blood is ebbing and plashing.

All quiet along the Potomac to-night;

No sound save the rush of the river;

While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead

The picket's off duty forever!

ORDER FOR A DAY OF FASTING

Headquarters, Army Northern
Virginia,
August 13, 1863.

The President of the Confederate States has, in the name of the people, appointed August 21st as a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer. A strict observance of the day is enjoined upon the officers and soldiers of this army. All military duties, except such as are absolutely necessary, will be suspended. The commanding officers of brigades and regiments are requested to cause divine services, suitable to the occasion, to be performed in their respective commands. Soldiers! we have sinned against Almighty God. We have forgotten His signal mercies, and have cultivated a revengeful, haughty, and boastful spirit. We have not remembered that the defenders of a just cause should be pure in His eyes; that "our times are in His hands," and we have relied too much on our own arms for the achievement of our independence. God is our only refuge and our strength. Let us humble ourselves before Him. Let us confess our many sins, and beseech Him to give us a higher courage, and a purer patriotism, and a more determined will; that He will convert the hearts of our enemies; that He will hasten the time when war, with its sorrows and sufferings, shall cease, and that He will give us a name and place among the nations of the earth.

R. E. LEE, General.

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