L

BY PHOEBE CARY.

OADED with gallant soldiers,

A boat shot in to the land,

And lay at the right of Rodman's Point, With her keel upon the sand.

Lightly, gayly, they came to shore,
And never a man afraid;

When sudden the enemy opened fire
From his deadly ambuscade.

Each man fell flat on the bottom
Of the boat; and the captain said:
"If we lie here, we all are captured'
And the first who moves is dead!"

Then out spoke a negro sailor,
No slavish soul had he:
"Somebody's got to die, boys,
And it might as well be me!"

Firmly he rose, and fearlessly
Stepped out into the tide ;
He pushed the vessel safely off,
Then fell across her side:

Fell, pierced by a dozen bullets,

As the boat swung clear and free;

But there was n't a man of them there that day Who was fitter to die than he !

AR up the lonely mountain-side My wandering footsteps led; The moss lay thick beneath my feet, The pine sighed overhead. The trace of a dismantled fort Lay in the forest nave,

And in the shadow near my path

I saw a soldier's grave.

The bramble wrestled with the weed Upon the lowly mound,

The simple head-board, rudely writ, Had rotted to the ground;

I raised it with a reverent hand,

From dust its words to clear;

But time had blotted all but these: "A Georgia Volunteer."

I saw the toad and scaly snake
From tangled covert start,

And hide themselves among the weeds
Above the dead man's heart;
But undisturbed, in sleep profound,
Unheeding, there he lay ;

His coffin but the mountain soil,
His shroud, Confederate gray.

I heard the Shenandoah roll
Along the vale below,

I saw the Alleghanies rise

Toward the realms of snow.

The "Valley Campaign" rose to mind-
Its leader's name-and then

I knew the sleeper had been one
Of Stonewall Jackson's men.

Yet whence he came, what lip shall sayWhose tongue will ever tell

What desolated hearths and hearts

Have been because he fell?

What sad-eyed maiden braids her hair-
Her hair which he held dear?

One lock of which, perchance lies with
The Georgia Volunteer!

What mother, with long-watching eyes
And white lips cold and dumb,

Waits with appalling patience for

Her darling boy to come?

Her boy! whose mountain grave swells up

But one of many a scar

Cut on the face of our fair land

By gory-handed war.

What fights he fought, what wounds he wore, Are all unknown to fame;

Remember, on his lonely grave

There is not even a name !

That he fought well and bravely too,

And held his country dear,

We know, else he had never been

A Georgia Volunteer.

He sleeps what need to question now

If he were wrong or right?

He knows, e'er this, whose cause was just
In God the Father's sight.

He wields no warlike weapons now,

Returns no foeman's thrust;

Who but a coward would revile

An honest soldier's dust?