THE PICKET-GUARD 175

Than crucifixion of the soul,

Maryland, my Maryland!

I hear the distant thunder hum,
Maryland!

The Old Line's bugle, fife, and drum,
Maryland!

She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb;
Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!
She breathes! She burns! She'll come!
She'll come!

Maryland, my Maryland!

James Ryder Randall.

THE PICKET-GUARD

November, 1861

"ALL quiet along the Potomac," they say,
"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.

"T is 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-fire, are gleaming.

A tremulous sigh of the gentle night-wind
Through the forest leaves softly is creeping,

While the 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 in the cot on the mountain.
His musket falls slack; his face, dark and grim,
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 shade 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...? Ha! Mary, good-bye!"
The red 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.

DICKENS IN CAMP 177

RELIEVING GUARD

CAME the relief. "What, sentry, ho!

How passed the night through thy long waking?” "Cold, cheerless, dark, as may befit

The hour before the dawn is breaking."

"No sight? no sound?" "No; nothing save
The plover from the marshes calling,
And in yon western sky, about
An hour ago, a star was falling."

"A star? there's nothing strange in that."
"No, nothing; but, above the thicket,
Somehow it seemed to me that God

Somewhere had just relieved a picket."

Bret Harte.

DICKENS IN CAMP

ABOVE the pines the moon was slowly drifting,

The river sang below;

The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting

Their minarets of snow.

The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted
The ruddy tints of health

On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted
In the fierce race for wealth;

Till one arose, and from his pack's scant treasure
A hoarded volume drew,

And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure,
To hear the tale anew.

And then, while round them shadows gathered faster,

And as the firelight fell,

He read aloud the book wherein the Master
Had writ of "Little Nell."

Perhaps 't was boyish fancy,

or the reader

Was youngest of them all,

But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar A silence seemed to fall;

The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows, Listened in every spray,

While the whole camp, with "Nell,” on English meadows,

Wandered and lost their way.

And so in mountain solitudes

As by some spell divine —

o'ertaken

Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken

From out the gusty pine.

Lost is that camp, and wasted all its fire:
And he who wrought that spell?

Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire,
Ye have one tale to tell!

Lost is that camp, but let its fragrant story
Blend with the breath that thrills

With hop-vine's incense all the pensive glory
That fills the Kentish hills.

And

on that

TO A SEA-BIRD

grave where English oak and holly

And laurel wreaths entwine,

Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly
This spray of Western pine!

179

Bret Harte.

TO A SEA-BIRD

SAUNTERING hither on listless wings,
Careless vagabond of the sea,
Little thou heedest the surf that sings,
The bar that thunders, the shale that rings,
Give me to keep thy company.

Little thou hast, old friend, that's new;
Storms and wrecks are old things to thee;
Sick am I of these changes, too;

Little to care for, little to rue,

I on the shore, and thou on the sea.

All of thy wanderings, far and near,

Bring thee at last to shore and me; All of my journeyings end them here: This our tether must be our cheer,

I on the shore, and thou on the sea.

Lazily rocking on ocean's breast,

Something in common, old friend, have we: Thou on the shingle seek'st thy nest,

I to the waters look for rest,

I on the shore, and thou on the sea.

Bret Harte.