soldier guides her way. Now she turns over this face,
whose mouth is full of purple dust, bit out of the ground
in his extremest agony, the last sacrament offered him by
earth herself; now she raises that form, cold, stiff, stony, and ghastly as a dream of hell. But, lo! another comes; she too a woman, younger and fairer, yet not less bold, a maiden from the hostile town to seek her lover. They meet, two women among the corpses; two angels come to Golgotha, seeking to raise a man. There he lies before
them; they look. Yes, it is he you seek; the same dress, form, features, too; it is he, the son, the lover. Maid and mother could tell that face in any light. The grass is wet with his blood. The ground is muddy with the life of men. The mother's innocent robe is drabbled in the blood her bosom bore. Their kisses, groans, and tears recall the wounded man. He knows the mother's voice; that voice yet more beloved. His lips move only, for they cannot speak. He dies! The waxing moon moves high in
heaven, walking in beauty amid the clouds, and murmurs
soft her cradle-song unto the slumbering earth. The
broken sword reflects her placid beams. A star looks
down, and is imaged back in a pool of blood. The cool
night wind plays in the branches of the trees shivered
with shot. Nature is beautiful—that lovely grass under-
neath their feet; those pendulous branches of the leafy
elm; the stars, and that romantic moon lining the clouds
with silver light! A groan of agony, hopeless and pro-
longed, wails out from that bloody ground. But in yonder
farm the whippoorwill sings to her lover all night long ;
the rising tide ripples melodious against the shores. So
wears the night away,—Nature, all sinless, round that field of woe.
"The mom is up again, the dewy mom,
With breath all incense and with cheek all bloom.
Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn,
And living as if earth contained no tomb,
And glowing into day."
What a scene that morning looks upon! I will not turn again. Let the dead bury their dead. But their blood cries out of the ground against the rulers who shed it,—"Cain! where are thy brothers?" What shall the fool answer; what the traitor say?
Then comes thanksgiving in all the churches of Boston.
