Lee in the Capitol. (April, 1866.)

Hard pressed by numbers in his strait, / Rebellion's soldier-chief no more contends -- / Feels that the hour is come of Fate, / Lays down one sword, and widened warfare ends. / The captain who fierce armies led / Becomes a quiet seminary's head -- / Poor as his privates, earns his bread. / In studious cares and aims engrossed, / Strives to forget Stuart and Stonewall dead -- / Comrades and cause, station and riches lost, / And all the ills that flock when fortune's fled. / No word he breathes of vain lament, / Mute to reproach, nor hears applause -- / His doom accepts, perforce content, / And acquiesces in asserted laws; / Secluded now would pass his life, / And leave to time the sequel of the strife. / But missives from the Senators ran; / Not that they now would gaze upon a swordless foe, / And power made powerless and brought low: / Reasons of state, 'tis claimed, require the man.

Demurring not, promptly he comes / By ways which show the blackened homes, / And -- last -- the seat no more his own, / But Honor's; patriot grave-yards fill / The forfeit slopes of that patrician hill, / And fling a shroud on Arlington. / The oaks ancestral all are low; / No more from the porch his glance shall go / Ranging the varied landscape o'er, / Far as the looming Dome -- no more. / One look he gives, then turns aside, / Solace he summons from his pride: / "So be it! They await me now / Who wrought this stinging overthrow; / They wait me; not as on the day / Of Pope's impelled retreat in disarray -- / By me impelled -- when toward yon Dome / The clouds of war came rolling home" / The burst, the bitterness was spent, / The heart-burst bitterly turbulent, / And on he fared.