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SARAH HILDRETH BUTLER.
In dew-meshed cobwebs quivering on its breast,As the rank grass shakes with the wings that skimFrom coverts in the blossoming embrasure,Your conscious presence follows. I am stirredTo see your shape upon the sunlit azure,To hear the ringing of the voice once heardIn stories of those battailous days when youStood with that Lion Heart, whose flaming wordThe shackle from the slave forever threw,While your pulse beat the strain his trumpets blew!
IV.
Again, I mark the mad scream of the breakersOff Hatteras, and on the slant wet deck,Amid the wild waste of the whitening acresOf awful waters leaping for the wreck,Calm as upon your summer galleryI see you stitching on the silken pennon;Firing the faint and waiting hearts of menThat in transfiguring flash and smoke of cannon
