Fare thee well, oh, thou to memory dear, By our blessings lulled to slumbers sweet! Sleep on calmly in thy prison drear,-- Sleep on calmly till again we meet! Till the loud Almighty trumpet sounds, Echoing through these corpse-encumbered hills, Till God's storm-wind, bursting through the bounds Placed by death, with life those corpses fills-- Till, impregnate with Jehovah's blast, Graves bring forth, and at His menace dread, In the smoke of planets melting fast, Once again the tombs give up their dead! Not in worlds, as dreamed of by the wise, Not in heavens, as sung in poet's song, Not in e'en the people's paradise-- Yet we shall o'ertake thee, and ere long. Is that true which cheered the pilgrim's gloom? Is it true that thoughts can yonder be True, that virtue guides us o'er the tomb? That 'tis more than empty phantasy? All these riddles are to thee unveiled! Truth thy soul ecstatic now drinks up, Truth in radiance thousandfold exhaled From the mighty Father's blissful cup. Dark and silent bearers draw, then, nigh! To the slayer serve the feast the while! Cease, ye mourners, cease your wailing cry! Dust on dust upon the body pile! Where's the man who God to tempt presumes? Where the eye that through the gulf can see? Holy, holy, holy art thou, God of tombs! We, with awful trembling, worship Thee! Dust may back to native dust be ground, From its crumbling house the spirit fly, And the storm its ashes strew around,-- But its love, its love shall never die! THE BATTLE. Heavy and solemn, A cloudy column, Through the green plain they marching came! Measure less spread, like a table dread, For the wild grim dice of the iron game. The looks are bent on the shaking ground, And the heart beats loud with a knelling sound; Swift by the breasts that must bear the brunt, Gallops the major along the front-- "Halt!" And fettered they stand at the stark command, And the warriors, silent, halt! Proud in the blush of morning glowing, What on the hill-top shines in flowing, "See you the foeman's banners waving?" "We see the foeman's banners waving!" "God be with ye--children and wife!" Hark to the music--the trump and the fife, How they ring through the ranks which they rouse to the strife! Thrilling they sound with their glorious tone, Thrilling they go through the marrow and bone! Brothers, God grant when this life is o'er, In the life to come that we meet once more!