e as some brilliant star its orbit runs
And sheds on earth its light down from a thousand suns.

Thy throne emblazoned with the rarest jewels,
Each wall adorned with battered coats of mail,
Choice relics of some bloody fields or duels,
A legend or some untold battle tale.
I see the scouts go forth upon the trail,
And soldiers charging over battlements--
The weeping mother sends to God her wail;
While passion's rage the mortal heart laments,
The dove of peace is caged in direst banishments.

But see yon arms, full flushing victory
Brings hope, and joy is ringing everywhere
Beneath the "starry banner of the free,"
That shields her children from the tyrant's snare.
The peasant turns him to his lowly fare,
The rich pursues wild phantoms at his ease,
The rustic plies his long-forsaken share,
And lo! the dove is cooing, "Peace, sweet peace;"
For Mars has snatched his bolts from out the rosy East.

And when the last familiar scene has gone,
And brightest dawn has kissed the sable night,
Then thou shalt smile on faces yet unborn,
And be to them a gleaming beacon light;
For Might shall fall and on his throne sit Right,
When bloody wars and petty strifes have ceased;
Then thou shalt don thy spotless robe of white,
And say to man as hostess of the feast:
"My brother, sheath thy sword; the end of life is peace."

TO A FADED FLOWER

To a violet that faded on my coat at Natchez, Miss. March
8th, 1902.

Alas! thou lovely floweret wee,
Fate blew a blighting breath
Upon the delicate form of thee,--
Thou'st met untimely death!
Thou blowest, blushest nevermore,
To drink the dews of night;
Thy sweet though short-lived life is o'er,
Thou seest no more the light.

'Twas vain! aye, vain! the selfish strife
That drooped thy purple crest;
Some swain or maiden took thy life,
To deck a love-lorn breast.
Ah, floweret wee, the God who made
All in the earth and sky,
Decreed that thou should blow and fade,--
All else should live and die!

Now, he who wails the floweret's fate,
And all the rest of man,
Must meet that fate, aye soon or late,
And scale their measured span.
We are but flowers that blush and blow,
As flight of years rolls on,
With time and tide's cold ebb and flow--
'Tis said--"He's dead and gone!"

For as the maid clips off the stems
Where once the flowers have been,
So angels pluck earth's rarest gems,
Immortal souls of men!
The f