In or out of the olden bay;

For the blessed patron has found his day.

Such is the legend.

Hear this truth:

Over the trackless past, somewhere,
Lie the lost days of our tropic youth,
Only regained by faith and prayer,

Only recalled by prayer and plaint.

Each lost day has its patron saint !

A SECOND REVIEW OF THE GRAND

ARMY.

I READ last night of the Grand Review
In Washington's chiefest avenue,-

Two Hundred Thousand men in blue,

I think they said was the number,-
Till I seemed to hear their trampling feet,
The bugle blast and the drum's quick beat,
The clatter of hoofs in the stony street,
The cheers of people who came to greet,
And the thousand details that to repeat

Would only my verse encumber,-
Till I fell in a revery, sad and sweet,
And then to a fitful slumber.

When, lo! in a vision I seemed to stand
In the lonely Capitol. On each hand
Far stretched the portico; dim and grand
Its columns ranged, like a martial band

Of sheeted spectres whom some command
Had called to a last reviewing.

And the streets of the city were white and bare;
No footfall echoed across the square ;

But out of the misty midnight air

I heard in the distance a trumpet blare,
And the wandering night-winds seemed to bear
The sound of a far tattooing.

Then I held my breath with fear and dread;
For into the square, with a brazen tread,
There rode a figure whose stately head

O'erlooked the review that morning,
That never bowed from its firm-set seat
When the living column passed its feet,
Yet now rode steadily up the street

To the phantom bugle's warning:

Till it reached the Capitol square, and wheeled,
And there in the moonlight stood revealed
A well-known form that in State and field

Had led our patriot sires;

Whose face was turned to the sleeping camp,. Afar through the river's fog and damp,

Second Review of the Grand Army. 193

That showed no flicker, nor waning lamp,
Nor wasted bivouac fires.

And I saw a phantom army come,
With never a sound of fife or drum,
But keeping time to a throbbing hum
Of wailing and lamentation:
The martyred heroes of Malvern Hill,
Of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville,
The men whose wasted figures fill

The patriot graves of the nation.

And there came the nameless dead,—the men
Who perished in fever swamp and fen,
The slowly-starved of the prison-pen.

And, marching beside the others,
Came the dusky martyrs of Pillow's fight,
With limbs enfranchised and bearing bright:
I thought perhaps 'twas the pale moonlight-
They looked as white as their brothers !

And so all night marched the Nation's dead,
With never a banner above them spread,
Nor a badge, nor a motto brandishèd;

No mark-save the bare uncovered head

Of the silent bronze Reviewer;

With never an arch save the vaulted sky;
With never a flower save those that lie
On the distant graves-for love could buy
No gift that was purer or truer.

So all night long swept the strange array;
So all night long, till the morning gray,
I watched for one who had passed away,

With a reverent awe and wonder,—

Till a blue cap waved in the length'ning line, And I knew that one who was kin of mine Had come; and I spake—and lo! that sign Awakened me from my slumber.