The phantom-host has faded quite, Splendor and Terror gone-- Portent or promise--and gives way To pale, meek Dawn; The coming, going, Alike in wonder showing-- Alike the God, Decreeing and commanding The million blades that glowed, The muster and disbanding-- Midnight and Morn. The Released Rebel Prisoner.[18] (June, 1865.) Armies he’s seen--the herds of war, But never such swarms of men As now in the Nineveh of the North-- How mad the Rebellion then! And yet but dimly he divines The depth of that deceit, And superstition of vast pride Humbled to such defeat. Seductive shone the Chiefs in arms-- His steel the nearest magnet drew; Wreathed with its kind, the Gulf-weed drives-- ’Tis Nature’s wrong they rue. His face is hidden in his beard, But his heart peers out at eye-- And such a heart! like mountain-pool Where no man passes by. He thinks of Hill--a brave soul gone; And Ashby dead in pale disdain; And Stuart with the Rupert-plume, Whose blue eye never shall laugh again. He hears the drum; he sees our boys From his wasted fields return; Ladies feast them on strawberries, And even to kiss them yearn. He marks them bronzed, in soldier-trim, The rifle proudly borne; They bear it for an heir-loom home, And he--disarmed--jail-worn. Home, home--his heart is full of it; But home he never shall see, Even should he stand upon the spot; ’Tis gone!--where his brothers be. The cypress-moss from tree to tree Hangs in his Southern land; As weird, from thought to thought of his Run memories hand in hand. And so he lingers--lingers on In the City of the Foe-- His cousins and his countrymen Who see him listless go. A Grave near Petersburg, Virginia.[19] Head-board and foot-board duly placed-- Grassed in the mound between; Daniel Drouth is the slumberer’s name-- Long may his grave be green! Quick was his way--a flash and a blow, Full of his fire was he-- A fire of hell--’tis burnt out now-- Green may his grave long be! May his grave be green, though he Was a rebel of iron mould; Many a true heart--true to the Cause, Through the blaze of his wrath lies cold. May his grave be green--still green While happy years shall run; May none come nigh to disinter The--_Buried Gun_. “Formerly a Slave.” An idealized Portrait, by E. Vedder, in the Spring Exhibition of the National Academy, 1865. The sufferance of her race is shown, And retrospect of life, Which now too late deliverance dawns upon; Yet is she not at strife. Her children’s children they shall know The good withheld from her; And so her reverie takes prophetic cheer-- In spirit she sees the stir Far down the depth of thousand years, And marks the revel shine; Her dusky face is lit with sober light, Sibylline, yet benign. The Apparition. (A Retrospect.)