VICTOR GALBRAITH.

Victor Galbraith!

In the midst of the morning damp and gray,
These were the words they seemed to say:
"Come forth to thy death,
Victor Galbraith!"

Forth he came, with a martial tread;
Firm was his step, erect his head;
Victor Galbraith,

He who so well the bugle played,
Could not mistake the words it said:
"Come forth to thy death,

Victor Galbraith!"

He looked at the earth, he looked at the sky,
He looked at the files of musketry,

Victor Galbraith!

And he said, with a steady voice and eye, "Take good aim; I am ready to die!

Thus challenges death

Victor Galbraith.

Twelve fiery tongues flashed straight and red,
Six leaden balls on their errand sped ;

Victor Galbraith

Falls to the ground, but he is not dead;
His name was not stamped on those balls of lead,
And they only scath

Victor Galbraith.

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and was shot in Mexico for some breach of discipline. It is a common superstition among soldiers, that no balls will kill them unless their names are written on them. The old proverb says, 'Every bullet has its billet.'"

Three balls are in his breast and brain,
But he rises out of the dust again,
Victor Galbraith!

The water he drinks has a bloody stain;
"Oh, kill me, and put me out of my pain!"
In his agony prayeth

Victor Galbraith.

Forth dart once more those tongues of flame,
And the bugler has died a death of shame,
Victor Galbraith!

His soul has gone back to whence it came,
And no one answers to the name,
When the Sergeant saith,

"Victor Galbraith!"

Under the walls of Monterey
By night a bugle is heard to play,
Victor Galbraith!

Through the mist of the valley damp and gray
The sentinels hear the sound, and say,

"That is the wraith

Of Victor Galbraith!"

THE ROPEWALK.

IN that building, long and low,
With its windows all a-row,
Like the port-holes of a hulk,
Human spiders spin and spin,
Backward down their threads so thin
Dropping, each a hempen bulk.

THE ROPEWALK.

At the end, an open door;
Squares of sunshine on the floor
Light the long and dusky lane;
And the whirring of a wheel,
Dull and drowsy, makes me feel
All its spokes are in my brain.

As the spinners to the end
Downward go and reascend,

Gleam the long threads in the sun;
While within this brain of mine
Cobwebs brighter and more fine
By the busy wheel are spun.

Two fair maidens in a swing,
Like white doves upon the wing,

First before my vision pass;
Laughing, as their gentle hands
Closely clasp the twisted strands,
At their shadow on the grass.

Then a booth of mountebanks,
With its smell of tan and planks,
And a girl poised high in air
On a cord, in spangled dress,
With a faded loveliness,

Then a homestead among farms,
And a woman with bare arms
Drawing water from a well;
As the bucket mounts apace,
With it mounts her own fair face,
As at some magician's spell.

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Then an old man in a tower,

Ringing loud the noontide hour,

While the rope coils round and round Like a serpent at his feet,

And again, in swift retreat,

Nearly lifts him from the ground.

Then within a prison-yard,

Faces fixed, and stern, and hard,
Laughter and indecent mirth;
Ah! it is the gallows-tree!
Breath of Christian charity,

Blow, and sweep it from the earth!

Then a school-boy, with his kite
Gleaming in a sky of light,

And an eager, upward look ;

Steeds pursued through lane and field;
Fowlers with their snares concealed;
And an angler by a brook.

Ships rejoicing in the breeze,

Wrecks that float o'er unknown seas,

Anchors dragged through faithless sand

Sea-fog drifting overhead,

And, with lessening line and lead,
Sailors feeling for the land.

All these scenes do I behold,
These, and many left untold,

In that building long and low;
While the wheel goes round and round,
With a drowsy, dreamy sound,

And the spinners backward go.

SANTA FILOMENA.

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SANTA FILOMENA.1

WHENE'ER a noble deed is wrought,
Whene'er is spoken a noble thought,
Our hearts, in glad surprise,
To higher levels rise.

The tidal wave of deeper souls
Into our inmost being rolls,
And lifts us unawares

Out of all meaner cares.

Honor to those whose words or deeds
Thus help us in our daily needs,
And by their overflow

Raise us from what is low!

Thus thought I, as by night I read
Of the great army of the dead,

The trenches cold and damp,

The starved and frozen camp,

The wounded from the battle-plain,
In dreary hospitals of pain,

1 This poem is in honor of Miss Nightingale, an English lady, who won the admiration of Christendom by her devotion to the sick and wounded in the Crimean War of 1854-55, when England and France were fighting Russia. Filomena [Latin, Philomela] is the Italian for Nightingale, and by a singular fortune there is a Saint Filomena whose memory is honored, and at Pisa, in Italy, there is a chapel dedicated to her, and over the altar a picture "representing the Saint as a beautiful, nymph-like figure, floating down from heaven attended by two angels bearing the lily, palm, and javelin, and beneath, in the foreground, the sick and maimed, who are healed by her intercession."