Not lightly fall
Beyond recall

The written scrolls a breath can float;

The crowning fact,

The kingliest act

Of Freedom, is the freeman's vote!

For pearls that gem

A diadem

The diver in the deep sea dies;
The regal right

We boast to-night

Is ours through costlier sacrifice:

The blood of Vane,

His prison pain

Who traced the path the Pilgrim trod,
And hers whose faith

Drew strength from death,

And prayed her Russell up to God!

Our hearts grow cold,

We lightly hold

A right which brave men died to gain;

The stake, the cord,

The axe, the sword,

Grim nurses at its birth of pain.

The shadow rend,

And o'er us bend,

O martyrs, with your crowns and palms, Breathe through these throngs

Your battle songs,

Your scaffold prayers, and dungeon psalms!

Look from the sky,

Like God's great eye,

Thou solemn moon, with searching beam;

Till in the sight

Of thy pure light

Our mean self-seekings meaner seem.

Shame from our hearts
Unworthy arts,

The fraud designed, the purpose dark;

And smite away

The hands we lay

Profanely on the sacred ark.

To party claims,

And private aims,

Reveal that august face of Truth,
Whereto are given

The age of heaven,

The beauty of immortal youth.

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

As lips of the slain !

Kiss down the young eyelids,

Smooth down the gray hairs;

Let tears quench the curses

That burn through your prayers.

Strong man of the prairies,

Mourn bitter and wild! Wail, desolate woman!

Weep, fatherless child!

But the grain of God springs up
From ashes beneath,

And the crown of his harvest
Is life out of death.

Not in vain on the dial
The shade moves along,
To point the great contrasts
Of right and of wrong:
Free homes and free altars,
Free prairie and flood,
The reeds of the Swan's Marsh,
Whose bloom is of blood!

On the lintels of Kansas

That blood shall not dry; Henceforth the Bad Angel Shall harmless go by; Henceforth to the sunset, Unchecked on her way, Shall Liberty follow

The march of the day.

BARBARA FRIETCHIE.

P from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,

The clustered spires of Frederick stand
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.

Round about them orchards sweep,
Apple- and peach-tree fruited deep,

Fair as a garden of the Lord

To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,

On that pleasant morn of the early fall
When Lee marched over the mountain-wall, —

Over the mountains winding down,
Horse and foot, into Frederick town.

Forty flags with their silver stars,
Forty flags with their crimson bars,

Flapped in the morning wind: the sun
Of noon looked down, and saw not one.

Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;

Bravest of all in Frederick town,

She took up the flag the men hauled down;

In her attic-window the staff she set,
To show that one heart was loyal yet.

Up the street came the rebel tread,
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.