I saw the lantern of the guard "Halt! Who goes there?" my challenge cry, "Advance, and give the countersign!' Then onward pass, and all is well. But in the tent that night awake, 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, Spite of all that I can do, Though I try to cheer my comrades and be gay. Chorus. Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching, And beneath the starry flag we shall breathe the air again, Of freedom in our own beloved home. 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. So, within the prison cell We are waiting for the day Cho. That shall come to open wide the iron door, And the poor heart almost gay, As we think of seeing friends and home once more. Cho. KEARNY AT SEVEN PINES1 BY EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN So that soldierly legend is still on its journey,— 1 Against twenty thousand he rallied the field. 1By 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 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 A glory clothes the land from sea to sea, Within that land wert thou enthroned of late, 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, Before thy lowering brow, |