"Now, courage, my comrades! Keep steady! lie low!
Wait, like the couch'd lion, to spring on your foe:
Ye'll face without flinching the cannons' grim mouth,
For ye're 'Knights of the Horse-Shoe'--ye're Sons of the South!
There's Jackson!--how brave he rides! coursing at will,
Midst the prostrated lines on the crest of the hill;
God keep him! for what will we do if he falls?
Be ready, good fellows!--be cool when he calls
To the charge: Oh! we'll beat them,--we'll turn them,--and then
We'll ride them down madly!--On! Onward! my men!"

The feverish frenzy o'erwearies him soon,
And back on his pillows he sinks in a swoon.

And sometimes, when Alice is wetting his lip,
He turns from the draught, and refuses to sip:
--"'Tis sweet, pretty angel!--but yonder there lies
A famishing comrade, with death in his eyes:
His need is far greater,... Sir Philip, I think,--
Or was it Sir Philip?... go, go!--let him drink!"

And oft, with a sort of bewildered amaze,
On her face he would fasten the wistfullest gaze:
--"You are kind, but a hospital nurse cannot be
Like Alice,--my tenderest Alice,--to me.
Oh! I know there's at Beechenbrook, many a tear,
As she asks all the day,--'Will he never be here?'"

But Nature, kind healer! brings sovereignest balm,
And strokes the wild pulses with coolness and calm;