'Tis many a stormy day,

Since, out of the cold, bleak North,
Our great War-Eagle sailed forth
To swoop o'er battle and fray.
Many and many a day

O'er charge and storm hath he wheeled,
Foray and foughten field,

Tramp, and volley, and rattle!-
Over crimson trench and turf,
Over climbing clouds of surf,
Through tempest and cannon-rack,
Have his terrible pinions whirled —
(A thousand fields of battle!
A million leagues of foam!)
But our Bird shall yet come back,

He shall soar to his Eyrie-Home-
And his thundrous wings be furled,
In the gaze of a gladdened world,
On the Nation's loftiest Dome.

The Muse would weep for the brave,

But how shall she chant the wrong?
For a wayward Wench is she-
One that would rather wait
With Old John Brown at the tree

Than Stonewall dying in state.
When for the wrongs that were,
Hath she lilted a single stave?
Know, proud hearts, that, with her,
'Tis not enough to be brave.
By the injured, with loving glance,
Aye hath she lingered of old,
And eyed the Evil askance,

Be it never so haught and bold.
With Homer, alms-gift in hand,
With Dante, exile and free,
With Milton, blind in the Strand,
With Hugo, lone by the sea!

In the attic, with Berangér,

She could carol, how blithe and free! Of the old, worn Frocks of Blue,

(All threadbare with victory!) But never of purple and gold, Never of Lily or Bee!

WAR.

-Suspiria Ensis.

EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON.

UGENE LEE-HAMILTON was born in London in January, 1845, and was educated mainly in France and Germany. In 1864 he was sent to the University of Oxford, and in 1869 entered the British diplomatic service. He was first attached to the Embassy at Paris, and took part in the Alabama arbitration at Geneva. Subsequently he was appointed secretary in the British Legation at Lisbon. He had to renounce this second position in 1873 in consequence of the first symptoms of the cerebro-spinal malady which has ever since forced him, as he expresses it in one of his own sonnets,

"To keep through life the posture of the grave,
While others walk and run and dance and leap."

It was in order to while away the tedium arising out of this cruel malady which does not admit of his either reading to himself or of his being read to, that he first took to composing verse. All of his poetry has been composed without his touching pen or paper, and subsequently dictated.

Mr. Hamilton's first miscellaneous poems appeared in 1878, and attracted no notice whatever; and it was only with the publication of The New Medusa" that his poetry began to receive attention. This volume was followed, in 1885, by one entitled "Apollo and Marsyas," and his last publication, entitled “Imaginary Sonnets," came out in the fall of 1888. As a writer of sonnets he is most remarkable.

Mr. Hamilton is the half-brother of "Vernon Lee," the well-known author. He resides with his mother and step-father at Florence, Italy.

INTRODUCTION.

C. W. M.

THERE was a captive once at Fenestrél,
To whom there came an unexpected love
In the dim light which reached his narrow cell
From high above.

No hinge had turned, no gaoler seen her pass;
But when once there, she undisturbed remained;
For who would grudge a harmless blade of grass
To one long chained?

Between the flagstones of his prison floor
He saw one day a pale green shoot peep out,
And with a rapture never felt before

He watched it sprout.

The shoot became a flower: on its life
He fixed all hope, and ceased of self to think;
Striving to widen with his pointless knife
The cruel chink.

He bore great thirst when, parched, she drooped her head

In that close cell, to give her of his cup;
And when it froze, he stripped his wretched bed
To wrap her up.

Naming her Picciola; and week by week Grew so enamored as her leaves unfurled That his fierce spirit almost ceased to seek The outer world.

Oh such another Picciola hast thou,
My prison-nurtured Poetry, long been;
Sprung up between the stones, I know not how,
From seed unseen!

This book is all a plant of prison growth, Watered with prison water, not sweet rain; The writer's limbs and mind are laden both By heavy chains.

Not by steel shackles, riveted by men,
But by the clankless shackles of disease;
Which Death's own hand alone can sever, when
He so shall please.

What work I do, I do with numbed, chained hand,
With scanty light, and seeing ill the whole,
And each small part, once traced, must changeless
stand

Beyond control.

The thoughts come peeping, like the small black mice

Which in the dusk approach the prisoner's bed, Until they even nibble at his slice

Of mouldy bread.

The whole is prison work: the human shapes
Are such fantastic figures, one and all,
As with a rusty nail the captive scrapes
Upon his wall.

But if some shape of horror makes you shrink,
It is perchance some outline he has got
From nightmare's magic lantern. Do you think
He knows it not?

Scratched on that prison stone-work you will find Some things more bold than men are wont to read. The sentenced captive does not hide his mind;

He has no need.

Oh, would my prison were of solid stone

That knows no change, for habit might do much, And men have grown to love their dungeons lone; But 'tis not such.