Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Poetry and Incidents., Volume 2.
Frank Moore, Ed.

113. the battle summer.

by Henry T. Tuckerman.

The summer wanes,--her languid sighs now yield
     To autumn's cheering air;
The teeming orchard and the waving field
     Fruition's glory wear.

More clear against the flushed horizon wall,
     Stand forth each rock and tree;
More near the cricket's note, the plover's call,
     More crystalline the sea.

The sunshine chastened, like a mother's gaze,
     The meadow's vagrant balm;
The purple leaf and amber-tinted maize
     Reprove us while they calm;

For on the landscape's brightly pensive face,
     War's angry shadows lie;
His ruddy stains upon the woods we trace,
     And in the crimson sky.

No more we bask in Earth's contented smile,
     But sternly muse apart;
Vainly her charms the patriot's soul beguile,
     Or woo the orphan's heart.

Yon keen-eyed stars with mute reproaches brand
     The lapse from faith and law,--
No more harmonious emblems of a land
     Ensphered in love and awe.

As cradled in the noontide's warm embrace,
     And bathed in dew and rain,
The herbage freshened, and in billowy grace
     Wide surged the ripening grain;

And the wild rose and clover's honeyed cell
     Exhaled their peaceful breath,
On the soft air broke Treason's fiendish yell--
     The harbinger of death!

Nor to the camp alone his summons came,
     To blast the glowing day,
But heavenward bore upon the wings of flame
     Our poet's mate away;¹

And set his seal upon the statesman's lips
     On which a nation hung;²
And rapt the noblest life in cold eclipse,
     By woman lived or sung.³

How shrinks the heart from Nature's festal noon,
     As shrink the withered leaves,--
In the wan light of Sorrow's harvest-moon
     To glean her blighted sheaves.