"
Yielded bounteous "human harvests."
Each forgot the sacred lesson,
Thou art still thy brother's keeper;
Each essayed in vain to smother
In the ground the cries of bloodshed.
Family feuds are wounds that fester,
Home dissensions breed sore anguish,
Yet the love that binds the members,
Spreads the mantle of forgiveness;
And from every wound that severs
Parent stems and sturdy branches,
Springs a shoot of vital growing,
Flows a blessed balm of healing.
Thus may North and South uniting,
Soothe the pangs of heartstrings broken,
Leave the fierce and naming fires,
In the crucible to smoulder.
Let the ashes crumble, crumble,
To the dust of buried vengeance.
Let no moon wax o'er Lancaster,
But may shed her beams in gladness;
Let no moon wane o'er the city,
But illumes with love and pardon.

[5]Stephen Hedger, while Postmaster at Lancaster in 1874, was shot and
killed by Ebenezer Best.

[6]Dead.

[7]Deceased.

[8]See Appendix.

CANTO XI.
1865-1874.
CHANGE.

Now the civil war is ended,
Now the strife by arms is over;
And the city's star of fortune
Beams with undiminished glory:
All her brilliant constellation
Wears new rays of future promise,
All her plans for peace and progress
Move to swifter execution.
In eighteen hundred three and sixty,
Of the late, eventful cycle,
Was laid out a modern city
Of the dead among the grasses;
Was enclosed a cemetery,
On a green and graceful summit,
At the city's southeast section,
On the street we call Crab Orchard.
Shrubs and flowers lead the stranger
To invade the sacred precinct,
Clust'ring evergreens invite him
To behold the sad environs.
Gleaming shafts of purest marble,
Greet the eye of friend and mourner,
Costly slabs of stone and granite,
Wearing strange device and fashion,
Lie amid the urns and vases.
Lie among the shells and mosses:
Tell of forms long since departed,
Tell of loved ones safely resting,
Tell of fresh turned earth and sodding,
Of green wreaths and floral tributes,
Kindly tributes of affection.
And the ancient trodden graveyard,
Of the city's early ages,
Lingers on with sunken tomb-stones,
Lingers on with gray inscriptions,
Lingers yet with moss and ivy,
Winding close their clinging tendrils,
Lingers now a s