104

THE DYING SOLDIER.

He pressed his hand unto his lips,
And cried, "Oh! can it be,
The young, the fair, the innocent,
Must die for slavery?"

The groans and shrieks upon this field, Under the dome of the bright blue sky, The human forms now chilled in death, Will make the bravest heave a sigh!

My country! yes, they've sung of thee!
But it was mockery, yes, indeed!
And now thy people they shall mourn,
Because thy sons are called to bleed!

My country! yes, I'm proud of thee!
But on thy glory was a stain;
The clanking chain and baying hound,

Marked out the curse on liberty's plain!

They've sung aloud of our banner bright, As o'er the free it waves;

But lo! a stain was on its folds,

As it floated o'er millions of slaves!

And then as that father bent o'er him,
His life-blood fast ebbing away,
In a tent away down in Georgia,
Where the wounded and suffering lay.

A smile of remembrance passed o'er him,
And lit up the dying one's eye,
"I'm glad, very glad of your presence;-
But father, 'tis hard thus to die!”

Those words reached that dear father's heart,
And all of its fountains were stirred;
His lips were palsied, no sound could he
make,—

In vain did he strive to utter a word!

"Now, father," said the dying son, His voice grew faint and low,—

"Tell mother that I send a kiss To her before I go.!"

His tongue was loosed, his voice returned, He clasped him in his last embrace:

106

THE DYING SOLDIER.

"I will! I will!" he said,

And pressed him to his throbbing heart,

His hero and his dead.

That marble brow with auburn hair,
Lay lifeless on that father's breast,
Like sun-beams on the distant clouds,
Which line the gorgeous west.

A letter, a kiss, and a coil of hair,
That was sent to a nothern home,

And a mound of earth in Georgia's sand,
Told what that stain had done.