Page:Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War.djvu/28

10 Growing momently more wide.

Then the glances 'tween the Fates,

And the doubt on every side,

And the patience under gloom

In the stoniness that waits

The finality of doom.

So the winter died despairing,

And the weary weeks of Lent;

And the ice-bound rivers melted,

And the tomb of Faith was rent.

O, the rising of the People

Came with springing of the grass,

They rebounded from dejection

And Easter came to pass.

And the young were all elation

Hearing Sumter's cannon roar,

And they thought how tame the Nation

In the age that went before.

And Michael seemed gigantical,

The Arch-fiend but a dwarf;

And at the towers of Erebus

Our striplings flung the scoff.

But the elders with foreboding

Mourned the days forever o'er,