THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA.
Cheerly, on the axe of labor,
Let the sunbeams dance,
Better than the flash of sabre
Or the gleam of lance!
Strike! With every blow is given
Freer sun and sky,
And the long-hid earth to heaven
Looks, with wondering eye!
Loud behind us grow the murmurs
Of the age to come;
Clang of smiths, and tread of farmers,
Bearing harvest home!
Here her virgin lap with treasures
Shall the green earth fill;
Waving wheat and golden maize-ears
Crown each beechen hill.
Keep who will the city's alleys,
Take the smooth-shorn plain, —
Give to us the cedar valleys,
Rocks and hills of Maine!
In our North-land, wild and woody,
Let us still have part:
Rugged nurse and mother sturdy,
Hold us to thy heart!
O, our free hearts beat the warmer
For thy breath of snow;
And our tread is all the firmer
For thy rocks below.
Freedom, hand in hand with labor,
Walketh strong and brave;
On the forehead of his neighbor
No man writeth Slave!
Lo, the day breaks! old Katahdin's
Pine-trees show its fires,
While from these dim forest gardens
Rise their blackened spires.
Up, my comrades! up and doing!
Manhood's rugged play
Still renewing, bravely hewing
Through the world our way!
THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA.
SPEAK and tell us, our Ximena, looking northward far away,
O'er the camp of the invaders, o'er the Mexican array,
Who is losing? who is winning? are they far or come they near?
Look abroad, and tell us, sister, whither rolls the storm we hear.
"Down the hills of Angostura still the storm of battle rolls;
Blood is flowing, nen are dying; God have mercy on their souls!"
Who is losing? who is winning?- "Over hill and over plain,
I see but smoke of cannon clouding through the mountain rain.'
Holy Mother! keep our brothers! Look, Ximena, look once more.
"Still I see the fearful whirlwind rolling darkly as before,
Bearing on, in strange confusion, friend and foeman, foot and horse,
Like some wild and troubled torrent sweeping down its mountain course."
Look forth once more, Ximena! "Ah! the smoke has rolled away;
And I see the Northern rifles gleaming down the ranks of gray.
Hark! that sudden blast of bugles! there the troop of Minon wheels;
There the Northern horses thunder, with the cannon at their heels.
"Jesu, pity! how it thickens! now retreat and now advance!
Right against the blazing cannon shivers Puebla's charging lance!
Down they go, the brave young riders; horse and foot together fall;
Like a ploughshare in the fallow, through them ploughs the Northern ball."
Nearer came the storm and nearer, rolling fast and frightful on s Speak, Ximena, speak and tell us, who has lost, and who has won? "Alas! alas! I know not; friend and foe together fall,
O'er the dying rush the living: pray, my sisters, for them all!
"Lo! the wind the smoke is lifting: Blessed Mother, save my brain!
I can see the wounded crawling slowly out from heaps of slain.
Now they stagger, blind and bleeding; now they fall, and strive to rise;
Hasten, sisters, haste and save them, lest they die before our eyes!
"O my heart's love! O my dear one! lay thy poor head on my knee:
Dost thou know the lips that kiss thee? Canst thou hear me? canst thou sec?
O my husband, brave and gentle! O my Bernal, look once more
On the blessed cross before thee! Mercy! mercy! all is o'er!"
Dry thy tears, my poor Ximena; lay thy dear one down to rest;
Let his hands be meekly folded, lay the cross upon his breast;
Let his dirge be sung hereafter, and his funeral masses said:
To-day, thou poor bereaved one, the living ask thy aid.
Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair and young, a soldier lay,
Torn with shot and pierced with lances, bleeding slow his life away;
But, as tenderly before him, the lorn Ximena knelt,
She saw the Northern eagle shining on his pistol-belt.
With a stifled cry of horror straight she turned away her head;
With a sad and bitter feeling looked she back upon her dead;
But she heard the youth's low moaning, and his struggling breath of pai
And she raised the cooling water to his parching lips again.
Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed her hand and faintly smiled:
Was that pitying face his mother's? did she watch beside her child?
All his stranger words with meaning her woman's heart supplied:
With her kiss upon his forehead, "Mother!" murmured he, and died!
"A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, who led thee forth,
From some gentle, sad-eyed mother, weeping, lonely, in the North!"
Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as she laid him with her dead,
And turned to soothe the living, and bind the wounds which bled.
Look forth once more, Ximena! "Like a cloud before the wind
Roils the battle down the mountains, leaving blood and death behind;
Ah they plead in vain for mercy; in the dust the wounded strive;
Hide your faces, holy angels! oh thou Christ of God, forgive!”
Sink. O Night, among thy mountains! let the cool, gray shadows fall;
Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop thy curtain over all!
Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart the battle rolled,
In its sheath the sabre rested, and the cannon's lips grew cold.
But the noble Mexic women still their holy task pursued,
Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and faint and lacking food
Over weak and suffering brothers, with a tender care they hung,
And the dying foeman blessed them in a strange and Northern tongue.
Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil world of ours;
Upward, through its blood and ashes, spring afresh the Eden flowers;
From its smoking hell of battle, Love and Pity send their prayer,
And still thy white-winged angels hover dimly in our air!
My heart was heavy, for its trust had been
Abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong:
So, turning gloomily from my fellow
One summer Sabbath day I strolled among
The green mounds of the village burial-place;
Where, pondering how all human love and hate
Find one sad level; and how, soon or late,
Wronged and wrongdoer, each with meekened face,
And cold hands folded over a still heart,
Pass the green threshold of our common grave,
Whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart,
Awed for myself, and pitying my race, Our common sorrow, like a mighty
Swept all my pride away, and trembling I forgave !
Up the streets of Aberdeen,
By the kirk and college green,
Rode the Laird of Ury:
Close behind him, close beside,
Foul of mouth and evil-eyed,
Pressed the mob in fury.
Flouted him the drunken churl,
Jeered at him the serving-girl,
Prompt to please her master;
And the begging carlin, late
Fed and clothed at Ury's gate,
Cursed him as he passed her.
Yet, with calm and stately mien, Up the streets of Aberdeen
Came he slowly riding: And, to all he saw and heard, Answering not with bitter word, Turning not for chiding.
"Nay, I do not need thy sword,
Comrade mine," said Ury's lord;
"Put it up, I pray thee:
Passive to his holy will,
Trust I in my Master still,
Even though he slay me.
"Pledges of thy love and faith,
Proved on many a field of death,
Not by me are needed."
Marvelled much that henchman bold,
That his laird, so stout of old,
Now so meekly pleaded.
"Woe's the day!" he sadly said,
With a slowly-shaking head,
And a look of pity:
"Ury's honest lord reviled,
Mock of knave and sport of child,
In his own good city!
"Speak the word, and, master mine, As we charged on Tilly's line,
And his Walloon lancers, Smiting through their midst we 'll teach Civil look and decent speech
To these boyish prancers!"
"Marvel not, mine ancient friend,
Like beginning, like the end":
Quoth the Laird of Ury,
Is the sinful servant more
Than his gracious Lord who bore
Bonds and stripes in Jewry?
"Give me joy that in his name
I can bear, with patient frame,
All these vain ones offer;
While for them He suffereth long,
Shall I answer wrong with wrong,
Scoffing with the scoffer?
"Happier I, with loss of all, Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall,
With few friends to greet me,
Than when reeve and squire were seen, Riding out from Aberdeen,
With bared heads to meet me.
"When each goodwife, o'er and o'er, Blessed me as I passed her door;
And the snooded daughter, Through her casement glancing down, Smiled on him who bore renown
From red fields of slaughter.
"Hard to feel the stranger's scoff,
Hard the old friend's falling off,
Hard to learn forgiving:
But the Lord his own rewards,
And his love with theirs accords,
Warm and fresh and living.
"Through this dark and stormy night Faith beholds a feeble light
Up the blackness streaking: Knowing God's own time is best, In a patient hope I rest
For the full day-breaking!"
So the Laird of Ury said,
Turning slow his horse's head
Towards the Tolbooth prison, Where, through iron grates, he heard Poor disciples of the Word
Preach of Christ arisen!
Not in vain, Confessor old,
Unto us the tale is told
Of thy day of trial;
Every age on him, who strays
From its broad and beaten ways,
Pours its sevenfold vial.
Happy he whose inward ear
Angel comfortings can hear,
O'er the rabble's laughter;
And, while Hatred's fagots burn,
Glimpses through the smoke discern
Of the good hereafter.
Knowing this, that never yet Share of Truth was vainly set
In the world's wide fallow; After hands shall sow the seed, After hands from hill and mead Reap the harvests yellow.
Thus, with somewhat of the Seer,
Must the moral pioneer
From the Future borrow:
Clothe the waste with dreams of grain,
And, on midnight's sky of rain,
Paint the golden morrow!
MADDENED by Earth's wrong and evil, "Lord!" I cried in sudden ire, "From thy right hand, clothed with thunder,
Shake the bolted fire!
"Love is lost, and Faith is dying;
With the brute the man is sold;
And the dropping blood of labor
Hardens into gold.
"Here the dying wail of Famine,
There the battle's groan of pain: And, in silence, smooth-faced Mammon Reaping men like grain.
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