Hushed the wounded man his groaning;
Hushed the wife her little ones;
Alone they heard the drum-roll
And the roar of Sepoy guns.
But to sounds of home and childhood
The Highland ear was true;-
As her mother's cradle-crooning
The mountain pipes she knew.
Like the march of soundless music
Through the vision of the seer,
More of feeling than of hearing,
Of the heart than of the ear,
She knew the droning pibroch,
She knew the Campbell's call:
"Hark! hear ye no' MacGregor's,-
The grandest o' them all!
Oh! they listened, dumb and breathless,
And they caught the sound at last ;
Faint and far beyond the Goomtee
Rose and fell the piper's blast!
Then a burst of wild thanksgiving
Mingled woman's voice and man's ;
"God be praised!-the march of Havelock!
The piping of the clans!”
Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance,
Sharp and shrill as swords at strife,
Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call,
Stinging all the air to life.
But when the far-off dust-cloud
To plaided legions grew,
Full tenderly and blithsomely
The pipes of rescue blew !
Round the silver domes of Lucknow,
Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine,
Breathed the air to Britons dearest,
The air of Auld Lang Syne.
O'er the cruel roll of war-drums
Rose that sweet and homelike strain;
And the tartan clove the turban,
As the Goomtee cleaves the plain.
Dear to the corn-land reaper
And plaided mountaineer,
To the cottage and the castle
The piper's song is dear.
Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch
J'er mountain, glen, and glade;
But the sweetest of all music
The Pipes at Lucknow played!
I MOURN no more my vanished years:
Beneath a tender rain,
An April rain of smiles and tears,
My heart is young again.
The west winds blow, and, singing low,
I hear the glad streams run;
The windows of my soul I throw
Wide open to the sun.
No longer forward nor behind
I look in hope or fear
But, grateful, take the good I find,
The best of now and here.
I plough no more a desert land,
To harvest weed and tare
The manna dropping from God's hand
Rebukes my painful care.
I break my pilgrim staff,—I lay
Aside the toiling oar;
The angel sought so far away
I welcome at my door.
The airs of spring may never play
Among the ripening corn,
Nor freshness of the flowers of May
Blow through the autumn morn;
Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look
Through fringed lids to heaven,
And the pale aster in the brook
Shall see its image given ;--
The woods shall wear their robes of praise,
The south wind softly sigh,
And sweet, calm days in golden haze
Melt down the amber sky.
Not less shall manly deed and word
Rebuke an age of wrong;
The graven flowers that wreathe the sword
Make not the blade less strong.
But smiting hands shall learn to heal,-
To build as to destroy;
Nor less my heart for others feel
That I the more enjoy.
All as God wills, who wisely heeds
To give or to withhold,
And knoweth more of all my needs
Than all my prayers have told !
Enough that blessings undeserved
Have marked my erring track;~
That wheresoe'er my feet have swerved,
His chastening turned me back ;—
That more and more a Providence
Of love is understood,
Making the springs of time and sense
Sweet with eternal good;-
That death seems but a covered way
Which opens into light,
Wherein no blinded child can stray
Beyond the Father's sight;-
That care and trial seem at last,
Through Memory's sunset air,
Like mountain-ranges overpast,
In purple distance fair;
That all the jarring notes of life
Seem blending in a psalm,
And all the angles of its strife
Slow rounding into calm.
And so the shadows fall apart,
And so the west winds play;
And all the windows of my heart
I open to the day.
A BLUSH as of roses
Where rose never grew !
Great drops on the bunch-grass,
But not of the dew!
A taint in the sweet air
For wild bees to shun!
A stain that shall never
Bleach out in the sun!
Back, steed of the prairies!
Sweet song-bird, fly back!
Wheel hither, bald vulture!
Gray wolf, call thy pack!
The foul human vultures
Have feasted and fled;
The wolves of the Border
Have crept from the dead.
From the hearths of their cabins,
The fields of their corn,
Unwarned and unweaponed,
The victims were torn,—
By the whirlwind of murder
Swooped up and swept on
To the low, reedy fen-lands,
The Marsh of the Swan.
With a vain plea for mercy
No stout knee was crooked;
In the mouths of the rifles
Right manly they looked.
How paled the May sunshine,
O Marais du Cygne!
On death for the strong life,
On red grass for green!
In the homes of their rearing,
Yet warm with their lives,
Ye wait the dead only,
Poor children and wives!
Put out the red forge-fire,
The smith shall not come;
Unyoke the brown oxen,
The ploughman lies dumb.
Wind slow from the Swan's Marsh,
O dreary death-train,
With pressed lips as bloodless
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