Killed in the trenches! How cold and bare
The inscription graved on the white card there.
'Tis a photograph, taken last Spring, they say,
Ere the smoke of battle had cleared away--
Of a rebel soldier--just as he fell,
When his heart was pierced by a Union shell;
And his image was stamped by the sunbeam's ray,
As he lay in the trenches that April day.

Oh God! Oh God! How my woman's heart
Thrills with a quick, convulsive pain,
As I view, unrolled by the magic of Art,
One dreadful scene from the battle-plain:--
White as the foam of the storm-tossed wave,
Lone as the rocks those billows lave--
Gray sky above--cold clay beneath--
A gallant form lies stretched in death!

With his calm face fresh on the trampled clay,
And the brave hands clasped o'er the manly breast:
Save the sanguine stains on his jacket gray,
We might deem him taking a soldier's rest.
Ah no! Too red is that crimson tide--
Too deeply pierced that wounded side;
Youth, hope, love, glory--manhood's pride--
Have all in vain Death's bolt defied.

His faithful carbine lies useless there,
As it dropped from its master's nerveless ward;
And the sunbeams glance on his waving hair
Which the fallen cap has ceased to guard--
Oh Heaven! spread o'er it thy merciful shield,
No more to my sight be the battle revealed!
Oh fiercer than tempest--grim Hades as dread--
On woman's eye flashes the field of the dead!

The scene is changed: In a quiet room,
Far from the spot where the lone corse lies,
A mother kneels in the evening gloom
To offer her nightly sacrifice.
The noon is past, and the day is done,
She knows that the battle is lost or won--
Who lives? Who died? Hush! be thou still!
The boy lies dead on the trench-barred hill.

Battle of Hampton Roads.