One foot he centred, and the other turned
Round through the vast profundity obscure,
And said, "Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds,
This be thy just circumference, O world!"
Thus God the heaven created, thus the earth,
Matter unformed and void; darkness profound
Covered the abyss; but on the watery calm
His brooding wings the Spirit of God outspread,
And vital virtue infused, and vital warmth
Throughout the fluid mass.

Then founded, then conglobed

Like things to like, the rest to several place
Disparted, and between spun out the air;
And earth, self-balanced, on her centre hung.

"Let there be light," said God; and forthwith light
Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure,
Sprung from the deep, and from her native east,

To journey through the airy gloom began,

Sphered in a radiant cloud; for yet the sun

Was not; she in a cloudy tabernacle

Sojourned the while. God saw the light was good,
And light from darkness, by the hemisphere,

Divided: light the day, and darkness night,

He named; thus was the first day even and morn;

Nor passed uncelebrated, nor unsung

By the celestial choirs, when orient light
Exhaling first from darkness they beheld

Birthday of heaven and earth: with joy and shout

The hollow universal orb they filled,

And touched their golden harps, and hymning praised
God and his works; Creator him they sung,
Both when first evening was, and when first morn.

John Burns, of Gettysburg.

AVE you heard the story that gossips tell

Of Burns of Gettysburg?-No? Ah, well:

Brief is the glory that hero earns,
Briefer the story of poor John Burns:

He was the fellow who won renown,—

The only man who didn't back down

When the rebels rode through his native town:
But held his own in the fight next day,

When all his townsfolk ran away.

That was in July, sixty-three,

The very day that General Lee,

Flower of Southern chivalry,

Baffled and beaten, backward reeled

From a stubborn Meade and a barren field.

I might tell how, but the day before,
John Burns stood at his cottage-door,

Looking down the village street,

Where, in the shade of his peaceful vine,

He heard the low of his gathered kine,
And felt their breath with incense sweet;
Or I might say when the sunset burned
The old farm gable, he thought it turned
The milk that fell, in a babbling flood
Into the milk-pail, red as blood!

Or how he fancied the hum of bees
Were bullets buzzing among the trees.

But all such fanciful thoughts as these

Were strange to a practical man like Burns, Who minded only his own concerns,

Troubled no more by fancies fine

Than one of his calm-eyed, long-tailed kine. Quite old-fashioned and matter-of-fact,

Slow to argue, but quick to act.

That was the reason, as some folks say,

He fought so well on that terrible day.

And it was terrible. On the right

Raged for hours the heavy fight,

Thundered the battery's double bass,

Difficult music for men to face;

While on the left-where now the graves
Undulate like the living waves
That all that day unceasing swept
Up to the pits the rebels kept—
Round-shot ploughed the upland glades,
Sown with bullets, reaped with blades;
Shattered fences here and there

Tossed their splinters in the air;

The very trees were stripped and bare;

The barns that once held yellow grain
Were heaped with harvests of the slain;
The cattle bellowed on the plain,

The turkeys screamed with might and main,
And brooding barn-fowl left their rest,
With strange shells bursting in each nest.

Just where the tide of battle turns,
Erect and lonely stood old John Burns.
How do you think the man was dressed?
He wore an ancient long buff vest,
Yellow as saffron,-but his best;

And, buttoned over his manly breast,

Was a bright blue coat, with rolling collar,

And large gilt buttons,-size of a dollar,-
With tails that the country-folk called "swaller."
He wore a broad-brimmed, bell-crowned hat,
White as the locks on which it sat.

Never had such a sight been seen

For forty years on the village green,

Since old John Burns was a country beau
And went to the "quiltings" long ago.

Close at his elbows all that day,
Veterans of the Peninsula,

Sunburnt and bearded, charged away;
And striplings, downy of lip and chin,—
Clerks that the Home Guard mustered in,—
Glanced, as they passed, at the hat he wore,
Then at the rifle his right hand bore;

And hailed him, from out their youthful lore,

With scraps of a slangy repertoire:

"How are you, White Hat?" "Put her through."
"Your head's level," and "Bully for you!"
Called him "Daddy,"-begged he'd disclose
The name of the tailor who made his clothes,
And what was the value he set on those;
While Burns, unmindful of jeer and scoff,
Stood there picking the rebels off,-

With his long brown rifle, and bell-crown hat,
And the swallow-tails they were laughing at.

'Twas but a moment, for that respect

Which clothes all courage their voices checked.
And something the wildest could understand
Spake in the old man's strong right hand;
And his corded throat, and the lurking frown.
Of his eyebrows under his old bell-crown;

Until, as they gazed, there crept an awe

Through the ranks in whispers, and some men saw
In the antique vestments and long white hair,
The Past of the Nation in battle there;

And some of the soldiers since declare

That the gleam of his old white hat afar,
Like the crested plume of the brave Navarre,
That day was their oriflamme of war.

So raged the battle. You know the rest:
How the rebels, beaten and backward pressed,
Broke at the final charge and ran.