in our Lord
The rigid lines of law shall curve
To spare us; from our heads shall swerve
Its smiting sword.

And light is mingled with the gloom,
And joy with grief;
Divinest compensations come,
Through thorns of judgment mercies bloom
In sweet relief.

Thanks for our privilege to bless,
By word and deed,
The widow in her keen distress,
The childless and the fatherless,
The hearts that bleed!

For fields of duty, opening wide,
Where all our powers
Are tasked the eager steps to guide
Of millions on a path untried
The slave is ours!

Ours by traditions dear and old,
Which make the race
Our wards to cherish and uphold,
And cast their freedom in the mould
Of Christian grace.

And we may tread the sick-bed floors
Where strong men pine,
And, down the groaning corridors,
Pour freely from our liberal stores
The oil and wine.

Who murmurs that in these dark days
His lot is cast?
God's hand within the shadow lays
The stones whereon His gates of praise
Shall rise at last.

Turn and o'erturn, O outstretched Hand
Nor stint, nor stay;
The years have never dropped their sand
On mortal issue vast and grand
As ours to-day.

Already, on the sable ground
Of man's despair
Is Freedom's glorious picture found,
With all its dusky hands unbound
Upraised in prayer.

Oh, small shall seem all sacrifice
And pain and loss,
When God shall wipe the weeping eyes,
For suffering give the victor's prize,
The crown for cross.

BARBARA FRIETCHIE.

This poem was written in strict conformity to the account of the
incident as I had it from respectable and trustworthy sources. It has
since been the subject of a good deal of conflicting testimony, and the
story was probably incorrect in some of its details. It is admitted by
all that Barbara Frietchie was no myth, but a worthy and highly esteemed
gentlewoman, intensely loyal and a hater of the Slavery Rebellion,
holding her Union flag sacred and keeping it with her Bible; that when
the Confederates halted before her house, and entered her dooryard, she
denounced them in vigorous language, shook her cane in their faces, and
drove them out; and when General Burnside's troops followed close upon
Jackson's, she waved her flag and cheered the