I saw the lantern of the guard

Advancing with the night relief.

“Halt! Who goes there?” my challenge cry,

It rings along the watchful line;
“Relief!” I hear a voice reply;

Advance, and give the countersign!”
With bayonet at the charge I wait-

The corporal gives the mystic spell;
With arms aport I charge my mate,

Then onward pass, and all is well.

But in the tent that night awake,

I ask, if in the fray I fall,
Can I the mystic answer make

When the angelic sentries call ?
And pray that Heaven may so ordain,

Whene'er I go, what fate be mine,
Whether in pleasure or in pain,

I still may have the countersign. (Southern.)

TRAMP, TRAMP, TRAMP

BY GEORGE F. ROOT

In the prison cell I sit,

Thinking, mother dear, of you, ,
And our bright and happy home so far away,

And the tears they fill my eyes,

Spite of all that I can do, Though I try to cheer my comrades and be gay.

Ι

Chorus.

Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching,

Oh, cheer up, comrades, they will come. And beneath the starry flag we shall breathe the air

again, Of freedom in our own beloved home.

a

In the battle front we stood

When the fiercest charge they made,
And they swept us off a hundred men or more,

But before we reached their lines

They were beaten back dismayed,
And we heard the cry of vict'ry o'er and o'er.

Cho. So, within the prison cell

We are waiting for the day
That shall come to open wide the iron door,

And the hollow eye grows bright,

And the poor heart almost gay, As we think of seeing friends and home once more.

Cho.

KEARNY AT SEVEN PINES 1

BY EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN

So that soldierly legend is still on its journey,

That story of Kearny who knew not to yield ! 'Twas the day when with Jameson, fierce Berry, and

Birney, Against twenty thousand he rallied the field. "By permission of the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Where the red volleys poured, where the clamor rose

highest, Where the dead lay in clumps through the dwarf

oak and pine, Where the aim from the thicket was surest and

nighest,No charge like Phil Kearny's along the whole line.

When the battle went ill, and the bravest were solemn, Near the dark Seven Pines, where we still held our

ground, He rode down the length of the withering column,

And his heart at our war-cry leapt up with a bound; He snuffed, like his charger, the wind of the powder,

His sword waved us on and we answered the sign: Loud our cheer as we rushed, but his laugh rang the

louder, There's the devil's own fun, boys, along the whole

line!”

How he strode his brown steed! How we saw his

blade brighten In the one hand still left,—and the reins in his teeth! He laughed like a boy when the holidays heighten,

But a soldier's glance shot from his visor beneath. Up came the reserves to the mellay infernal, Asking where to go in,-through the clearing or

pine? “O, anywhere! Forward! 'Tis all the

same, Colonel : You'll find lovely fighting along the whole line!”

O, evil the black shroud of night at Chantilly,

That hid him from sight of his brave men and tried ! Foul, foul sped the bullet that clipped the white lily, The flower of our knighthood, the whole army's

pride! Yet we dream that he still,—in that shadowy region Where the dead form their ranks at the wan drum

mer's sign,Rides on, as of old, down the length of his legion,

And the word still is Forward! along the whole line.

THE DEATH OF SLAVERY

BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

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.

Fierce men at thy right hand,

With gesture of command, Gave forth the word that none might dare gainsay;

And grave and reverend ones, who loved thee not, Shrank from thy presence, and in blank dismay

Choked down, unuttered, the rebellious thought; While meaner cowards, mingling with thy train, Proved, from the book of God, thy right to reign.

Great as thou wert, and feared from shore to shore,

The wrath of Heaven o'ertook thee in thy pride;

Thou sitt'st a ghastly shadow; by thy side
Thy once strong arms hang nerveless evermore.

And they who quailed but now
Before thy lowering brow,