READING THE LIST. S there any news of the war?" she said. Only a list of the wounded and dead," Was the man's reply, Without lifting his eye To the face of the woman standing by. "T is the very thing I want," she said; "Read me a list of the wounded and dead." He read the list-'t was a sad array Of the wounded and killed in the fatal fray. In the very midst, was a pause to tell That his comrades asked: "Who is he, pray?" Of his captain nigh— What ails the woman standing near? “Well, well, read on; is he wounded? Quick! O God! but my heart is sorrow-sick! Is he wounded?" "No; he fell, they say, Sadly she opened her eyes to the light; God pity the cheerless Widow Gray, [The tenderly pathetic story told in this poem is true. Its heroine was Margaret Augusta Peterson, a volunteer nurse in St. Mary's Hospital at Rochester, New York. She died in the manner related, on the first of September, 1864, and lies buried in Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester, as does also the young surgeon, her lover.-EDITOR.] HROUGH the sombre arch of that gateway tower THR Where my humblest townsman rides at last, And between the spring and the summer time, Or ever the lilac's bloom is shed, When they come with banners and wreaths and rhyme, To deck the tombs of the nation's dead, They find there a little flag in the grass, To the captain's grave with the gilded crown. But if perchance they seek to recall What name, what deeds, these honors declare, They cannot tell, they are silent all As the noiseless harebell nodding there. She was tall, with an almost manly grace, And young, with strange wisdom for one so young, And fair with more than a woman's face; With dark, deep eyes, and a mirthful tongue. The poor and the fatherless knew her smile; What she might have been in these times of ours, And always a power is lovingness. But her fortunes fell upon evil days— And she was not one who could stand at gaze Nor could she dance to the viol's tune, When the drum was throbbing throughout the land, Or dream in the light of the summer moon When Treason was clenching his mailèd hand. Through the long gray hospital's corridor She stood by the good old surgeon's side, And the sufferers smiled as they saw her stand; She wrote, and the mothers marvelled and cried At their darling soldiers' feminine hand. She was last in the ward when the lights burned low, For sometimes the wreck of a man would rise, No wonder the youngest surgeon felt A charm in the presence of that brave soul, Through weary weeks, as she nightly knelt With the letter from home or the doctor's dole. |