“Well, well, read on; is he wounded? Quick! O God! but my heart is sorrow-sick! Is he wounded?” “No; he fell, they say, Killed outright on that fatal day!” But see, the woman has swooned away! Sadly she opened her eyes to the light; Slowly recalled the events of the fight; Faintly she murmured: “Killed outright! It has cost me the life of my only son; But the battle is fought, and the victory won; The will of the Lord, let it be done!” God pity the cheerless Widow Gray, And send from the halls of eternal day The light of his peace to illumine her way. [Southern.] [Illustration] [Illustration] A WOMAN OF THE WAR. BY ROSSITER JOHNSON. [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.] Through the sombre arch of that gateway tower Where my humblest townsman rides at last, You may spy the bells of a nodding flower, On a double mound that is thickly grassed. 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, And fling a handful of roses down, And pause a moment before they pass 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; The friend in sorrow had seen her tears; She had studied the ways of the rough world’s guile, And read the romance of historic years. What she might have been in these times of ours, At once it is easy and hard to guess; For always a riddle are half-used powers, And always a power is lovingness. But her fortunes fell upon evil days-- If days are evil when evil dies,-- And she was not one who could stand at gaze Where the hopes of humanity fall and rise. 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 journeyed many a mournful league, And her light foot fell on the oaken floor As if it never could know fatigue.