WILLIAM GORDON MCCABE

1841

CAPTAIN MCCABE, head master of the University School at Richmond, Virginia, was born near Richmond, and was graduated from the University of Virginia. He was a captain of artillery in the Confederate army. During the war he wrote several popular lyrics. He is also the author of The Defence of Petersburg, Campaign of 1864-1865. His sprightly wit, scholarship, and good comradeship make him welcome in all social and literary circles.

CHRISTMAS NIGHT OF '62

THE wintry blast goes wailing by,
The snow is falling overhead;
I hear the lonely sentry's tread,
And distant watch fires light the sky.

Dim forms go flitting through the gloom;

The soldiers cluster round the blaze
To talk of other Christmas days,
And softly speak of home and home.

My saber swinging overhead

Gleams in the watch fire's fitful glow,
While fiercely drives the blinding snow,
And memory leads me to the dead.

My thoughts go wandering to and fro,
Vibrating 'twixt the Now and Then ;
I see the low-browed home again,
The old hall wreathed with mistletoe.

And sweetly from the far-off years

Comes borne the laughter faint and low,
The voices of the Long Ago!
My eyes are wet with tender tears.

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I feel again the mother-kiss,

I see again the glad surprise

That lightened up the tranquil eyes,
And brimmed them o'er with tears of bliss,

Gleams in the watch fire's fitful glow,
While fiercely drives the blinding snow,
Aslant upon my saddened brow.

Those cherished faces all are gone!

Asleep within the quiet graves

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Where lies the snow in drifting waves,-
And I am sitting here alone.

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There's not a comrade here to-night

But knows that loved ones far away On bended knees this night will pray: "God bring our darling from the fight."

But there are none to wish me back,

For me no yearning prayers arise.

The lips are mute and closed the eyes –
My home is in the bivouac.

In the Army of Northern Virginia.

JOAQUIN MILLER

1841

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CICINNATUS HINER MILLER, better known by his pen name, Joaquin Miller, was born in Indiana, but most of his life has been spent on the Pacific slope. He has been a miner, a lawyer, a judge, and an editor.

He has traveled in Europe, and in very recent years he made a visit to the Klondike. Several volumes of verse and two or three novels have come from his pen. He lives in a picturesque house on the heights overlooking San Francisco Bay.

COLUMBUS

BEHIND him lay the gray Azores,
Behind the Gates of Hercules;
Before him not the ghost of shores,

Before him only shoreless seas.

The good mate said: "Now must we pray,

For lo! the very stars are gone.
Brave Adm'r'l, speak, what shall I say?"
"Why, say: 'Sail on! sail on

and on!'"

"My men grow mutinous day by day;
My men grow ghastly wan and weak."
The stout mate thought of home; a spray
Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek.
"What shall I say, brave Adm'r'l, say,

If we sight naught but seas at dawn?"
"Why, you shall say at break of day:

'Sail on sail on! sail on! and on!'"

They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow,
Until at last the blanched mate said:

"Why, now not even God would know

Should I and all my men fall dead.

These very winds forget their way,

For God from these dread seas is gone.

Now speak, brave Adm'r'l, speak and say "—
He said: "Sail on! sail on! and on!"

They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate: 25 "This mad sea shows his teeth to-night.

He curls his lip, he lies in wait,
With lifted teeth, as if to bite!

Brave Adm'r'l, say but one good word:

What shall we do when hope is gone? The words leapt like a leaping sword:

"Sail on sail on! sail on and on!"

Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck,

And peered through darkness. Ah, that night

Of all dark nights! And then a speck ·

A light! A light! A light! A light!

It grew, a starlit flag unfurled!

It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. He gained a world; he gave that world Its grandest lesson: "On! sail on!"

WESTWARD HO!

WHAT strength! what strife! what rude unrest!
What shocks! what half-shaped armies met!

A mighty nation moving west,

With all its steely sinews set
Against the living forests. Hear
The shouts, the shots of pioneer,
The rended forests, rolling wheels,
As if some half-check'd army reels,
Recoils, redoubles, comes again,
Loud sounding like a hurricane.

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O bearded, stalwart, westmost men,

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So tower-like, so Gothic built!

A kingdom won without the guilt

Of studied battle, that hath been

Your blood's inheritance. . . . Your heirs
Know not your tombs: the great plowshares

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Cleave softly through the mellow loam.
Where you have made eternal home,
And set no sign. Your epitaphs
Are writ in furrows. Beauty laughs
While through the green ways wandering
Beside her love, slow gathering
White, starry-hearted May-time blooms
Above your lowly leveled tombs ;
And then below the spotted sky

She stops, she leans, she wonders why
The ground is heaved and broken so,
And why the grasses darker grow
And droop and trail like wounded wing.

Yea, Time, the grand old harvester,
Has gather'd you from wood and plain.
We call to you again, again;
The rush and rumble of the car

Comes back in answer. Deep and wide
The wheels of progress have passed on;
The silent pioneer is gone.

His ghost is moving down the trees,
And now we push the memories

Of bluff, bold men who dared and died

In foremost battle, quite aside.

SIDNEY LANIER

1842-1881

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MOST critics regard Lanier as the chief of the poets who have come from the South since the death of Poe. He was born at Macon, Georgia, and was graduated from Oglethorpe College. He was among the first to enlist in the Confederate army, and near the close of the war he served on a blockade runner. For a time after the war he taught school, and later practiced law; but his absorbing interest was in music