1. When April rains and the great spring-tide Cover the lowlands far and wide, And eastern winds blow somewhat harsh Over the salt and mildewed marsh, Then the grasses take deeper root, Sucking, athirst and resolute; And when the waters eddy away, Flowing in trenches to Newark Bay, The fibrous blades grow rank and tall, And from their tops the reed-birds call. Five miles in width the moor is spread; Two broad rivers its borders thread; The schooners which up their channels pass Seem to be sailing in the grass, Save as they rise with the moon-drawn sea, Twice in the day, continuously. 2. Gray with an inward struggle grown, The brooding lawyer, Hermann Van Ghelt, Lived at the mansion-house, alone; But a chilling cloud at his bosom felt, Like the fog which crept, at morn and night, Across the rivers in his sight, And rising, left the moorland plain Bare and spectral and cold again. He saw the one tall hill, which stood Huge with its quarry and gloaming wood, And the creeping engines, as they hist Through the dim reaches of the mist,— Serpents, with ominous eyes aglow, Thridding the grasses to and fro; And he thought how each dark, receding train Carried its freight of joy and pain, On toil’s adventure and fortune’s quest, To the troubled city of unrest; And he knew that under the desolate pall Of the bleak horizon, skirting all, The burdened ocean heaved, and rolled Its moaning surges manifold. 3. Often at evening, gazing through The eastward windows on such a view, Its sense enwrapt him as with a shroud; Often at noon, in the city’s crowd, He saw, as ’twere in a mystic glass, Unbidden faces before him pass: A soldier, with eyes unawed and mild As the eyes of one who was his child; A woman’s visage, like that which blest A year of his better years the best; And the plea of a voice, remembered well, Deep in his secret hearing fell. And as week by week its records brought Of heroes fallen as they fought, There little by little awakenéd In the lawyer’s heart a shapeless dread, A fear of the tidings which of all On ear and spirit heaviest fall,— Changeless sentence of mortal fate, Freezing the marrow with—Too Late! XIII. 1. Thus,—when ended the morning tramp, And the regiment came back to camp, And the Colonel, breathing hard with pain, Was carried within the lines again,— Thus a Color-Sergeant told The story of that skirmish bold: