But the singer feels it will better suit the ballad,
If all should deem it right,

To tell the story as if what it speaks of
Had happened but last night.

"Come a little nearer, Doctor,-thank you,let me take the cup:

Draw your chair up,-draw it closer, -just another little sup!

May-be you may think I'm better; but I'm pretty well used up,

Doctor, you've done all you could do, but I'm just a going up!

"Feel my pulse, sir, if you want to, but it ain't

much use to try

"Never say that," said the Surgeon, as he smothered down a sigh;

"It will never do, old comrade, for a soldier to say die!"

"What you say will make no difference, Doctor, when you come to die."

Welcome, my old Sergeant, welcome! Welcome by that countersign!'

And he pointed to the scar there, under this old cloak of mine!

"As he grasped my hand, I shuddered, thinking only of the grave;

But he smiled and pointed upward with a bright and bloodless glaive:

That's the way, sir, to Head-quarters.'

What

Head-quarters! - Of the Brave.' 'But the great Tower?'-That,' he answered, 'Is the way, sir, of the Brave!'

"Then a sudden shame came o'er me at his uniform of light;

At my own so old and tattered, and at his so new and bright;

Ah!' said he, you have forgotten the New Uniform to-night,

Hurry back, for you must be here at just twelve o'clock to-night!'

"And the next thing I remember, you were sitting there, and I—

Doctor-did you hear a footstep? Hark!-God bless you all! Good-by!

Doctor, please to give my musket and my knapsack, when I die,

To my Son-my Son that's coming, he won't get here till I die!

"Tell him his old father blessed him as he never did before,

And to carry that old musket "-Hark! a knock is at the door!

"Till the Union-" See! it opens !—“ Father! Father! speak once more!""Bless you!"-gasped the old, gray Sergeant, and he lay and said no more!

AUTUMN SONG.

IN Spring the Poet is glad,
And in Summer the Poet is gay;
But in Autumn the Poet is sad,

And has something sad to say:

For the Wind moans in the Wood,

And the Leaf drops from the Tree; And the cold Rain falls on the graves of the Good,

And the cold Mist comes up from the Sea:

And the Autumn Songs of the Poet's soul
Are set to the passionate grief,
Of Winds that sough and Bells that toll
The Dirge of the Falling Leaf.

[Born 1839.]

LITTLE BREECHES.

I DON'T go much on religion,

I never ain't had no show;

But I've got a middlin' tight grip, sir,
On the handful o' things I know.
I don't pan out on the prophets

And free-will, and that sort of thing,But I b'lieve in God and the angels, Ever sence one night last spring.

I come into town with some turnips,
And my little Gabe come along,-
No four-year-old in the county

Could beat him for pretty and strong, Peart and chipper and sassy,

Always ready to swear and fight,And I'd larnt him to chaw terbacker Jest to keep his milk-teeth white.

The snow come down like a blanket
As I passed by Taggart's store;
I went in for a jug of molasses

And left the team at the door.
They scared at something and started,-
I heard one little squall,
And hell-to-split over the prairie

Went team, Little Breeches and all.

Hell-to-split over the prairie!

I was almost froze with skeer; But we rousted up some torches,

And sarched for 'em far and near. At last we struck horses and wagon, Snowed under a soft white mound, Upsot, dead beat,-but of little Gabe No hide nor hair was found.

And here all hope soured on me,
Of my fellow-critter's aid,-

I jest flopped down on my marrow-bones,
Crotch-deep in the snow, and prayed.

By this the torches was played out,
And me and Isrul Parr

Went off for some wood to a sheepfold
That he said was somewhar thar.

We found it at last, and a little shed

Where they shut up the lambs at night. We looked in and seen them huddled thar, So warm and sleepy and white;

And THAR Sot Little Breeches and chirped, As peart as ever you see, "I want a chaw of terbacker,

And that's what's the matter of me."

How did he git thar? Angels.

He could never have walked in that storm.
They jest scooped down and toted him
To whar it was safe and warm.
And I think that saving a little child,
And bringing him to his own,

Is a derned sight better business
Than loafing around The Throne.

JIM BLUDSO,

OF THE PRAIRIE BELLE.

WALL, no! I can't tell whar he lives,
Becase he don't live, you see;
Leastways, he's got out of the habit
Of livin' like you and me.

Whar have you been for the last three year
That you haven't heard folks tell
How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks
The night of the Prairie Belle?

He weren't no saint,-them engineers
Is all pretty much alike,——
One wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill

And another one here, in Pike;
A keerless man in his talk was Jim,
And an awkward hand in a row,
But he never flunked, and he never lied,-
I reckon he never knowed how.

And this was all the religion he had,To treat his engine well;

Never be passed on the river;

To mind the pilot's bell;
And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire,—
A thousand times he swore,

He'd hold her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last soul got ashore.

All boats has their day on the Mississip,
And her day come at last,-

The Movaster was a better boat,

But the Belle she wouldn't be passed.
And so she come tearin' along that night-
The oldest craft on the line-
With a nigger squat on her safety-valve,
And her furnace crammed, rosin and pine.

The fire burst out as she clared the bar,
And burnt a hole in the night,

And quick as a flash she turned, and made
For that willer-bank on the right.

There was runnin' and cursin', but Jim yelled

out,

Over all the infernal roar,

"I'll hold her nozzle agin the bank

Till the last galoot's ashore."

THE RETURN OF PARIS.

I STUMBLED thrice, and twice I fell and lay
Moaning and faint, and yet I did not pray
To any God or Goddess of them all;
Because I never doubted, climb or crawl,
That I should reach the fountain and the tall
One old familiar pine-tree, where I lay
Prone on my face, with outstretched hands, you
say,

Fallen once again-this time against the goal.
And now, what shall I pray for? since whole
my
Wish is accomplished, and I have your face
Once more by mine in the remembered place,
And the cool hand laid on my head aright,
A little while before I die to-night.
For surely I am dying: not a vein
But has received the poison and the pain
Of Philoctetes' arrow.-Oh! I heard
The hissing of the vengeance long deferred,
And felt it smite me, and not smite me dead;
And all at once the very words you said
Too long ago returned to me once more-
When, as you shall be, you are wounded sore,
Come back to me, and I will cure you then,
Whom none but I can cure: and once again,
Sweet! I am with you, and am cured by you,
And by you only; and yet it is true
That I must die, Enone. So it is,
And better that it is so! Hark to this.
How good it were, if we could live once more
The old sweet life we found so sweet before—
Here in the mountain where we were so glad,
Ere I was cruel and ere you were sad!
How good it were could we begin again
The old sweet life just where we left it then!

A song, love;-but my singing voice is gone--
The one song that I made, the only one
After I left you to be mad so long;

(A marvellous thing to have made no other song!)

The only one-which, many months ago,
Came to me strangely with a soft and slow
Movement of music, which at first was sad,
But sad and sweet, and after only sad,
And then most bitter, as its death gave birth
To a low laughter of uneasy mirth-
Made of blent noises that the night-winds bore,
The lapse of waves upon the dusky shore,
The creaking of the tackle, and the stir

Of threatening banners where the camp-fires were
About the armies, that no such a charm
As a regretful love song could disarm,
And bring to life the heroes that were slain,
And make the war as if it were a vain
Noise in the night that at the morn is not,
And all the Past a dream that it begot.
The wind was right to laugh my song away!

And then I thought-if only for a day
I might be with her, only for so long
As to be pardoned or (forgive the wrong)
Cursed by her there, and so get leave to die!
And here we are, Enone, you and I!
Yes, we are here! why ever otherwhere?

Ah! why indeed? And yet, love, let me dare
Uncover my whole heart to you once more;
I think I never was so blest before-
Never so happy as I am to-day.

Not even, indeed, when in the early May
We found each other, and were quite too glad
To know the value of the love we had.
But now I seem to know it in my need,
Inhaling the full sweetness of it-freed
Now, for the first time, from its perfect flower;
Ah! quite too sweet to overlast its hour!
What more now shall I pray for? To be let
Live and not die? Ah! if we could forget
All but the Present and outlaw the Past!
And yet I know not-could the Present last
If quite cut off from all that gave it birth,
And not be changed, if changed to alien earth,
Into a Future that we know not of?

We will not ask: we have attained to Love-
Whatever grown from-which not all the years
Past or to come, nor memories nor fears,
Can rob us of forever, nor make less.
No praying then-but only thankfulness!

No sound floats hither from the smoky plain :
Turn me a little-never mind the pain-
I see it now. And that was Ilion then!
The accursed city in the mouths of men,
Whose mouths are swift to interweave its name
With mine forever for a word of shame.

I never loved it, and it loved me not-
The fatal firebrand that itself begot

And tried to quench and could not-there it smokes !

And there the shed blood of its people soaks
Into the soil that they loved more than life.