XXIII.

There came at length an eve of gloom — Dread Gettysburg's eventful eve — When all the gathering clouds of doom Hung low, the breathless air to cleave

With scream of shell and cannon-boom! Man knew too well; and woman felt, That when the next-wild morn should rise, A blow of battle would, be dealt

Before whose fire ten thousand eyes — As in a furnace flame — would melt. And on this eve — her flock asleep — Knelt Mildred at her lonely bed.

She could not pray, she did not weep, But only moaned, and moaning, said: “Oh God! he sows what I must reap! “He will not live: he must not die!

But oh, my poor, prophetic heart! It warns me that there lingers nigh The hour when love and I must part!” And then she startled with a cry,

For, from beneath her lattice, came A low and once repeated call! She knew the voice that spoke her name, And swiftly, through the midnight hall

She fluttered noiseless as a flame, And on its unresisting hinge Threw wide her hospitable door, To one whose spirit did not cringe

Though he was weak, and knew he bore No right her freedom to infringe. She wildly clasped his neck of bronze; She rained her kisses; on his face,

Grown tawny with a thousand suns, And holding him in her embrace, She led him to her little ones, Who, reckless of his coming, slept.

Then down the stair with silent feet, And through the shadowy hall she swept, And saw, between her and the street, A form that into darkness crept.

She closed the door with speechless dread; She fixed the bolt with trembling hand; Then led the rebel to his bed, Whom love and safety had unmanned,

And left him less alive than dead. Through nights and days of fear and grief, She kept her faithful watch and ward, But love and rest brought no relief;

And all he begged for of his Lord Was death, with passion faint and brief.