Page:Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War.djvu/158

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The Released Rebel Prisoner.[1]
(June, 1865.)


Armies he's seen—the herds of war,
But never such swarms of men
As now in the Nineveh of the North—
How mad the Rebellion then!

And yet but dimly he divines
The depth of that deceit,
And superstition of vast pride
Humbled to such defeat.

Seductive shone the Chiefs in arms—
His steel the nearest magnet drew;
Wreathed with its kind, the Gulf-weed drives—
'Tis Nature's wrong they rue.

His face is hidden in his beard,
But his heart peers out at eye—