It shivered the window, pane and sash;
It rent the banner with seam and gash.

Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf;

She leaned far out on the window-sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.

"Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country's flag," she said.

A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came;

The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman's deed and word:

"Who touches a hair of yon gray head
Dies like a dog! March on!" he said.

All day long through Frederick street
Sounded the tread of marching feet:

All day long that free flag tossed
Over the heads of the rebel host.

Ever its torn folds rose and fell
On the loyal winds that loved it well;

And through the hill-gaps sunset light
Shone over it with a warm good-night.

Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er,
And the Rebel rides on his raids no more.

Honor to her! and let a tear
Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier.

Over Barbara Frietchie's grave
Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!

Peace and order and beauty draw
Round thy symbol of light and law;

And ever the stars above look down
On thy stars below in Frederick town!

* * * * *

A LETTER TO THOMAS CARLYLE.

SIR,--You have Homered it of late in a small way, one sees. You profess
to sing the purport of our national struggle. "South chooses to hire its
servants for life, rather than by the day, month, or year; North
bludgeons the Southern brain to prevent the same": that, you say, is the
American Iliad in a Nutshell. In a certain sense, more's the pity, it
must be supposed that you speak correctly; but be assured that this is
the American Iliad in no other nutshell than your private one,--in those
too contracted cerebral quarters to which, with respect to our matters,
your powerful intelligence, under such prolonged and pitiless extremes
of dogmatic compression, has at last got reduced.

Seriously, not in any trivial wilfulness of retort, I accuse you of a
narrowness and pettiness of understanding with regard to America. Give
me leave to "wrestle a fall" with you on this theme. And as I can with
but twoscore years match your threescore and five, let me entreat of
your courtesy to set that circumstance aside, and to constitute