"If they should fire on Pickens, let the Colonel in command

Put me upon the rampart, with the flag-staff in my hand: No odds how hot the cannon-smoke, or how the shell may fly;

I'll hold the Stars and Stripes aloft, and hold them till I die!

"I'm ready, General, so you let a post to me be given, Where Washington can see me, as he looks from highest heaven,

And say to Putnam at his side, or, may be, General

Wayne:

'There stands old Billy Johnson, that fought at Lundy's Lane!'

"And when the fight is hottest, before the traitors fly, When shell and ball are screeching and bursting in the sky, If any shot should hit me, and lay me on my face, My soul would go to Washington's, and not to Arnold's

place!"

BAYARD TAYLOR.

Sept., 1861.

66

'A'

THE PICKET GUARD.

The stereotyped announcement, "All Quiet on the Potomac," was followed one day in September, 1861, by the words, "A Picket Shot," and these so moved the authoress that she wrote this poem on the impulse of the moment.

LL quiet along the Potomac," they say,

66

'Except now and then a stray picket Is shot, as he walks on his beat, to and fro,

By a rifleman hid in the thicket.

'Tis nothing — a private or two, now and then,

Will not count in the news of the battle;

Not an officer lost

- only one of the men,

Moaning out, all alone, the death rattle."

All quiet along the Potomac to-night,

Where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming;

Their tents in the rays of the clear autumn moon,
Or the light of the watch-fires, are gleaming.

A tremulous sigh, as the gentle night-wind

Through the forest-leaves softly is creeping; While stars up above, with their glittering eyes,

Keep guard for the army is sleeping.

There's only the sound of the lone sentry's tread, As he tramps from the rock to the fountain, And thinks of the two in the low trundle-bed

Far away His musket falls slack his face, dark and grim,

in the cot on the mountain.

Grows gentle with memories tender,

As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep – For their mother

may Heaven defend her!

The moon seems to shine just as brightly as then, That night, when the love yet unspoken

Leaped up to his lips when low-murmured vows

Were pledged to be ever unbroken.

Then drawing his sleeve roughly over his eyes,

He dashes off tears that are welling,

And gathers his gun closer up to its place
As if to keep down the heart-swelling.

He passes the fountain, the blasted pine-tree
The footstep is lagging and weary;

Yet onward he goes, through the broad belt of light,
Toward the shades of the forest so dreary.
Hark! was it the night-wind that rustled the leaves?
Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing?

It looked like a rifle "Ah! Mary, good-bye!"
And the life-blood is ebbing and plashing.

All quiet along the Potomac to-night,

No sound save the rush of the river;

While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead

The picket's off duty forever.

ETHEL LYNN BEERS.

THE WASHERS OF THE SHROUD.

Oct., 1861.

A

LONG a river-side, I know not where,

I walked one night in mystery of dream; A chill creeps curdling yet beneath my hair, To think what chanced me by the pallid gleam Of a moon-wraith that waned through haunted air.

Pale fireflies pulsed within the meadow-mist
Their halos, wavering thistledowns of light;
The loon, that seemed to mock some goblin tryst,
Laughed; and the echoes, huddling in affright,
Like Odin's hounds, fled baying down the night.

Then all was silent, till there smote my ear

A movement in the stream that checked my breath: Was it the slow plash of a wading deer?

But something said, "This water is of Death!

The Sisters wash a shroud,—ill thing to hear!"